“It’s been a big shock, and people are reeling,” said Bob Krumenaker, a former superintendent of Big Bend National Park and a member of Keep Big Bend Wild, a small advocacy group. “There’s nothing more destructive to the wildness of Big Bend National Park than a border wall.”
The idea of a border wall in Big Bend was once unthinkable.
The far West Texas region is one of the most remote, unpopulated places in the continental U.S.—a hot, arid landscape that defies human existence. Few migrants bother to cross the border here, for the same reason few people have ever called this part of the Chihuahuan Desert home. Summers are deadly hot, water is scarce, and any trek by foot will be long, arduous, and dangerous. Much of the Rio Grande is sheltered by steep, unscalable canyons—some as deep as 1,500 feet—that are far more effective in deterring illegal crossings that any man-made fence could ever be. The Big Bend sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which encompasses nearly a quarter of the U.S.-Mexico border, typically has the fewest crossings of any of the agency’s nine sectors.
Virtually no one, it seems, thinks a physical barrier in the region is a good idea. The Trump administration is rushing to build one anyway.
Read the full article at Texas Monthly.
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