In early May, an imposing image of a jaguar suddenly came into view on the border wall between Nogales, Arizona, and Sonora, Mexico. A striking Mexican wolf shined in the big cat’s place, followed by a grizzly bear, a pronghorn and a puma.
This collection of animal projections reflects the iconic species that roam the desert region and are most at risk due to the wall carved through it, which was expanded and fortified during the Trump administration.
The temporary installation was created by artist Lauren Strohacker in partnership with several environmental nonprofit organizations to draw attention to how the US-Mexico border wall is altering critical habitats for a variety of wildlife that are increasingly threatened. by development and human-caused climate change.
“It’s not about making beautiful art. “It’s about radicalizing people about what this wall does, what it doesn’t do, what people say it does and is not a solution to what we consider problems,” Strohacker told me. “And it’s causing more and more problems for those communities, both human and non-human, in the border areas.”
For today’s newsletter, I’m diving into the science behind why border walls could impact wildlife populations and how art is playing an increasingly important role in highlighting these issues.
Endangered Sonoran pronghorns can be found in Mexico and southwestern Arizona. Credit: Lauren Strohacker
Animals on the other side of the border: The border wall between the United States and Mexico stretches between San Diego and Brownsville, Texas, cut in the middle by the Rio Grande River, where a spectrum of nature exists on both sides of the structure.
“I think there is a kind of monolithic vision of the border, by people who don’t live near it. And usually it’s an image of, you know, just a desert landscape,” Myles Traphagen told me. He is the borderlands program coordinator at the nonprofit Wildlands Network, which supported Strohacker’s work.
But along the 1,200 miles that span the Pacific coast to the Rio Grande, “there’s a lot of variability in the landscape,” ranging from oceanic intertidal zones to juniper forests in New Mexico and Arizona, he said.
The wall structure itself can appear as diverse as the landscapes depending on where it is located. In some parts of Texas, for example, the rugged terrain surrounding the Rio Grande acts as a natural barrier with little or no man-made fencing, while other regions contain sporadic structures that focus primarily on preventing cars from crossing. United States from Mexico. Meanwhile, in Nogales, where the recent art installation took place, the wall was built using steel bollards about 20 feet high filled with concrete and wrapped in barbed wire.
These are the types of structures that can isolate both humans and wildlife, said Jesse Alston, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Natural Resources and Environment.
“The new design of the border wall, designed to try to keep everything out… has really reduced the ability of animals, particularly large animals, to get through the fence simply because there isn’t as much space between the slats,” Alston said, who studies animal movement, told me. While smaller animals like rabbits and lizards can still get through the wall, “if you think about something like a mule deer, they have 30-inch-wide antlers, which are really firm,” he said. “You can’t bend your horns and pass.”
He added that an equally deterrent factor for wildlife as physical structures is the widespread human presence and activity along the entire border, from bright lights and noisy vehicles patrolling the roads around the wall to the influx of migrants trying to pass. to request asylum in the TO US
In either case, barriers can prevent wildlife from finding resources such as food and water or potential mates. This was the case with an endangered Mexican wolf nicknamed Mr. Goodbar. He walked along the wall around New Mexico in 2021 for nearly five days before giving up and traveling back north, which writer Douglas Main covered for National Geographic in 2022.
In 2021, the border wall prevented a Mexican gray wolf from crossing into Mexico, scientists say. Credit: Lauren Strohacker
Climate change could also pose complex problems for animals at the border. Some studies suggest that rising temperatures and habitat loss could push Mexican jaguars north in the future, where they could face wall structures throughout Arizona and New Mexico. In other places, such as mountain ranges that straddle the border, animals may try to ascend to escape warmer temperatures or chase food sources and “then get trapped in the border wall and not be able to take advantage of those habitats.” ”. changes,” Alston said.
There hasn’t been much research yet on the effects the border has already had on wildlife, largely because this region is difficult and sometimes dangerous to study. There are some modifications to parts of the wall, such as small “dog gate”-like slots to help mitigate its impact, although researchers are unsure of their effectiveness for different species.
“It is not a simple question. I wish it was,” Alston said. “It would be a lot easier if it were a simple question.”
Projecting the plight of wildlife: Strohacker created his first wildlife projection in 2017 on the border wall in Douglas, Arizona, where images of animals were clearly visible on both sides of the structure in the United States and Mexico.
This time, however, Strohacker’s wildlife projections faced many of the same problems faced by the real animals on the Nogales wall.
“It was a very different projection. The animals certainly fought artistically against the barbed wire. “I was fighting the lighting, but I think that certainly reflects what’s really going on,” Strohacker said, adding that there were dead vines and a tattered T-shirt hanging from the wire. “This is a much more devastating scenario.”
Black bears are the only bear species still found in Arizona. Credit: Lauren Strohacker
When conceptualizing his projects, most of which focus on wildlife, Strohacker generally considers three main factors: the place in which he works, the memory and changing landscapes of that place, and the conflicts within it. For the border installations he also had to spend a lot of time thinking about logistics. In 2017, Strohacker had to meet with “two very large border patrol agents,” although it wasn’t difficult to get the project approved since he wasn’t painting or physically touching the border with anything, he said.
Other artists have centered their work around border issues, focusing primarily on the human struggles that immigrants have faced. For example, in 2019, a functional children’s seesaw was installed on the structure that runs through New Mexico and Mexico to represent that “actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other side,” artists Ronald Rael and wrote designer Virginia San Fratello in a social media post.
Strohacker says the fate of animals is also intertwined with human actions, and art allows him to reach the public in a different way than science.
“It’s not necessarily about showing ideas or illustrating. “It’s about having creative conversations with people and telling stories in a much deeper way that, unfortunately, I think science and facts can’t do,” she says. “We definitely need to touch people’s hearts, no matter how saccharine it may be.”
More top climate news
I recently wrote about how extreme weather events and heat are affecting schools across the United States. It turns out that solving that problem will not be easy or cheap.
a new Washington Post analysis find that As heat waves become more frequent in northern states, increasing air conditioning in schools in regions that didn’t need it before could cost billions of dollars. However, this intervention will be crucial for students because research shows that heat can disrupt a child’s cognition and ability to concentrate in class.
Meanwhile, a 73-year-old passenger recently died. due to injuries he suffered during severe turbulence on a flight from London to Singapore. Research says rising temperatures caused by climate change could be making turbulence in airplanes more frequent and severe by strengthening the jet stream in the atmosphere, Nature reports.
In other news, Alaska‘s rivers and streams are turning orange, probably due to thawing of frozen ground, according to a new study. This soil, known as permafrost, exposes water to minerals like iron as temperatures rise, transforming once-clear masses of water into rusty liquid rivers, Aliya Uteuova writes for The Guardian.
Kiley Price
Reporter
Kiley Price is a reporter for Inside Keynote USA and is particularly interested in wildlife, ocean health, food systems and climate change. She writes the ICN newsletter “Climate Today,” which covers the most pressing environmental news every week.
She earned her master’s degree in science journalism from New York University and her bachelor’s degree in biology from Wake Forest University. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Time, Scientific American and more. She was a Pulitzer Reporting Fellow, during which she spent a month in Thailand covering the intersection between Buddhism and the country’s environmental movement.
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