No Muro: Tales of Collaboration from the site of the border wall

The Park:

Big Bend National Park was created on June 12th, 1944. Enshrining 1,252 square miles of land, the largest portion of the Chihuahuan desert in the US, 118 miles of the Rio Grande/ Rio Bravo Del Norte and the entirety of the Chisos mountains, into US law. There are 75 species of mammals that call this park their home including the mountain lion, the black bear and the bighorn sheep. Over 450 species of birds, more than any other national park, 11 species of amphibians, 56 species of reptiles and 1200 species of plants, including an array of extraordinary vegetation that can withstand blistering heat, below zero temperatures and as low as 5 inches of rainfall a year. A total of 1000 species are endemic to Big Bend.

The park preserves an exceptionally detailed paleontological record of the last 130 million years, including on the very few places in the world to have exposures of strata laid down during the asteroid impact event in the cretaceous period — the last and 5th great extinction event — making it a UNESCO world heritage site.

Having spent a month wandering, cycling and paddling through this magnificent landscape, I can say it is one of the few national parks that feels truly wild. In the four weeks we were in the park, I didn’t see a single plane fly overhead. For great stretches and many days on the Rio Grande / Rio Bravo Del Norte river, we didn’t see another human. Some could say it is timeless.

The Wall:

One of the greatest features of Big Bend National Park is the Rio Grande / Rio Bravo Del Notre river, which snakes like a lifegiving vein for both nations along the 188 miles of the Mexican American border. This unfortunate position, also makes it a target for trumps campaign promise of a 2000 mile “‘impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall”.

Having paddled a significant stretch of the Rio Grande/ Rio Bravo Del Norte in the National park, at times in awe of the towering canyon walls 1000 feet above me; having steered our boats clear of the dense river cane that audibly hums with swarms of thousands of bees, then stepped out into impassable mud creeks that swallowed us up to our knees; having naively tried to climb the cliffs and mesas and felt my foot and handholds crumble away from under me at a great height, it is a wonder there is any need for a wall in this region at all. If by any chance anyone might be able to cross this river, they would be faced with an expanse of hostile desert, without a map and with not enough water to survive the many days it would take to hike out.

Should, for whatever reason, further border control be deemed absolutely necessary, then immigration experts have emphasised that high tech border security such as sensors and aerial surveillance is by an order of magnitude more effective than a standalone fence.

As Blas Nunez-Neto, a Senior Policy Advisor at RAND Corporation breaks down, “If you’re worried about drugs, you need to make investments in the ports of entry, and if you are worried about the current immigration system, we need to reform our asylum system”.

As it stands, according to the Washington Post, while the national parks expect a ca. $495m budget cut in 2020 against a backdrop of $16b in deferred maintenance and repairs, to fulfil Trump’s campaign promise Congress has approved funding to repair 139 miles of the existing border wall and by shifting a staggering $3.6 billion from the defence department budget, plans to fund 11 projects that would replace or build an additional 176.5 miles of barriers at the borders. Furthermore, only 16% of the required land to achieve this has been acquired. Several highly costly land ownership court trials are to be expected. Upon recent estimate, before legal proceedings, the wall is costing ca. £17.3m per mile — against a backdrop of 58% of the American public who according to the Pew Research Centre, who continue to oppose the substantial expansion of the border wall.

Perhaps somewhat amusingly, as Nick Paumgarten in the New Yorker points out, being a natural system, the river border does not keep a permanent position and in fact shifts a not insignificant distance over time, making this stretch of the American Mexican border somewhat notional.

Even more ironic is that the wall could not be built in the centre of the river, or be legally possible to be built on the Mexican side, so instead it would have to be built on the American side. Given some of the environmental and geological features, it means that, at times, the wall would need to be built great distances from the border, cutting off some of the main sources of tourism income to the park in the process — the river and the mystical canyons. A park currently estimated to contribute $1.77b ecosystem service value to the US economy and $37.9m in local community economic benefits.

Add to this a little bit of history and you will also find that Texas, one of the largest border states, actually used to be owned by Mexico in the 1800s after gaining independence from Spain and before the Mexico-America war. During the time before Texas declared it’s own independence and subsequently became annexed by America, Mexico had even provided inexpensive land to settlers from the United States as a means to assuage border territory invasions.

In short, it would cut people off from their own property, adversely affect 93 listed or proposed endangered species, disrupt water flows, negatively impact local tourism, seal the US off from its own river and reduce the size of Texas.

Smart move, Trump.

The River:

Beyond its iconic natural beauty and service to the local ecosystem, this river serves an important function to the surrounding farms, industries and municipalities. Currently, demand for the rivers’ water is ca. 75% for irrigation and 22% for municipal needs. However, with the burgeoning growth of desert cities like El Paso demand is due to sky-rocket and by 2050 closer to 45% of total water is expected for cities and 50% to irrigation. Needless to say, invariably big cities stand to win, small farmers stand to lose.

Such needs could be manageable if the river was in full flow, but in reality, where in 1978, a record high was recorded of 65,332 CFS, by May 2003, its was reported that the Rio Grande/ Rio Bravo Del Norte had run dry in Big Bend National Park altogether. When we put in at Lajitas just after the rainy season in early November, the water level was 400 CFS.

Now, cast your minds forward for a second. In a recent report, Big Bend was listed as Number 1 of to the Top Ten National Parks, facing the steepest rise in the number of days to be expected searing about 100oF in the shade. El Paso has already started a pilot for the city to start drinking exclusively closed-loop purified sewage water. If successful, many desert cities will follow.

While a changing climate has undoubtedly played a role in this river flow, some other historical influences have played a defining role. For example, it was very interesting for me to learn that the only reason the river is flowing in Big Bend was due to contributions from Mexican rivers. Specifically, an average of 90% of surface river flow to the river comes from the Rio Conchos basin and the Luis Leon dam on the Mexican side. Upstream from this tributary is an area called the Forgotten Reach — a 200-mile stretch, South East of El Paso on the American side which is reduced to a dust bed for the majority of the year.

These contributions are the result of a water treaty passed in 1944 between the US and Mexico granting shared water rights and maintaining commitments between the two nations to keep the river healthy and strong. This was very much a necessary partnership it would seem. Especially from the US side who had previously built the Elephant Butt Dam in New Mexico for recreational and agriculture use, which after completion in 1916 gradually reduced the Rio Grande/ Rio Bravo Del Norte from its former white water grandeur to a small and seasonal stream.

Much like nature herself then, actions in an ecosystem have reactions, and it is, therefore important to recognise how this bottleneck of water supply to the millions of acres of rain-fed farms was a major contributor the necessary and perhaps even just mass migration of Mexicans to the US for survival after the devasting drought in the 1990s.

The Collaboration:

At a time when nature needs us most, why then must we be so determined to drive a physical and metaphorical wall between us?

This sentiment is perhaps best described by Carlos Alberto Sifuentes-Lugo, Regional Director of WWF Mexico. “For us, the river is not a boundary, it is a union”.

What pleased me most from my travels was to hear and see the collaboration at a grassroots level, happening unbeknownst and, as best it can, largely unaffected by the broader political debate.

Here at the riverbed, there is “an extraordinary level of cooperation taking place”, shared Sifuentes-Lugo. Why? Because for these desert dwellers the river is everything. It is life itself.

With rangers from both the Mexico and US parks teaming up to tackle the invasive species that are ravaging the river beds, through WWF helping farmers improve their practices to preserve and put to best use every last drop of water they use, on the entire fire fighting team that has fought off forest fires for big bend that is staffed exclusively by “diablos”, Mexican nationals. Here there are no borders, just a deep understanding that this is one ecosystem that we must work together to preserve.

The History:

Such heartfelt, authentic collaborations could inspire us to look back at history and ask us to rethink some missed opportunities.

In the thirties, the Franklin D Roosevelt administration discussed the idea of a bi-national park linking public lands on the American side with millions of acres of wild country, both public and private already set aside across the river. Something Nick Paumgarten called a kind of “anti-wall”.

This would have fast followed in the footsteps of an excellent precedent set in 1932, when the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park was formed along the boundary lines of the Waterton Lakes National Park of Alberta, Canada and Glacier National Park of Montana, USA.

While grassroots movements in the parks’ favour bubbled under the surface for many decades since it never quite achieved traction. After the September 11th attacks and subsequent tightening of all border controls, it was almost lost entirely.

That was until May 19th 2010, when in recognition of the long history of bilateral cooperation in conservation the then American and Mexican Presidents, Obama and Calderon, made a joint announcement recognising and designating Big Bend — Rio Bravo as a natural area of bi-national interest. “Underscoring their commitment to managing the region in a way that enhances security and protects these areas for wildlife preservation, ecosystem restoration, climate change adaptation, wildland fire management, and invasive species control”.

While this was a great political stride for both countries, this is still a far cry away from a true International Peace Park.

As Carlos Alberto Sifuentes-Lugo explained around the time, “The Mexican government has limited resources to develop its protected areas. Today, across from Big Bend, there are no roads, no stores, no electricity, no water. It’s totally remote and wild.”

Fast forward to 2019 and this landscape and its conditions, unsurprisingly, remain the same. And as we all know, the politics behind it have taken a nosedive.

To date, there is no detailed plan for a binational peace park. In fact, most lawmakers have not even heard of the idea.

The opportunity:

Each year 331 million people visit America’s National Parks who in some way appreciate the natural beauty that we need to protect, paying $1.3b in entrance fees and contributing ca. $32b to the US economy.

If one man and his administration could not achieve this in the 1930s, nor two and their administrations in 2010, then one thing we are learning from modern history, is that public opinion and social media really can move mountains.

At a time when we are teetering on the edge of the sixth great extinction and nothing is more important to the survival of the human race than to preserve a sustainable habitat on earth, perhaps it is time for us to rise together in the face of fear and division and call for this next bi-national peace park to finish what it started. Rise in whatever way we can, to protect our wild places. Because nature knows no boundaries, so why should we?

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