More than 600 miles of fencing are already up – a hodge-podge of metal panels, wire mesh and steel posts. The California, Arizona and New Mexico portions were finished largely without incident. But the last 70 miles, mostly along the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, are proving a challenge.
Opponents of the fence have petitioned the Obama administration to halt construction. Environmentalists are demanding a top-level review of the route, which they say would block such rare species as the ocelot from critical habitat. Property owners are contesting federal seizure of their land. Engineers are struggling to address flooding concerns.
And all the while, drug smugglers and illegal immigrants continue to breach the fencing that is up, forcing Border Patrol agents and contractors to return again and again for repairs. The smugglers build ramps to drive over fencing, dig tunnels under it, or use blow torches to slice through. They cut down metal posts used as vehicle barriers and replace them with dummy posts, made from cardboard.
Even if they can get over/under it, I’m guessing animals can sometimes have a tendency to follow the path of least resistance, and thus get changing migratory patterns, with all which that implies.
We have a fence in Melilla, not so long, quite high, cameras everywhere, traps to entangle people in the middle, our police in riot gear on our side and the moroccan police at their backs, sometimes shooting live ammo. And still some manage to get through (think medieval up the ladder stuff).
Look, if this migratory pattern isn’t important enough to the ocelot to hop a small fence, something it can do easily, I don’t know why any of us should give a damn! Ecosysytems are dynamic and constantly changing. Acting as if they are a precious artifact that must be preserved in a static state, hermetically sealed away from any intersection with mankind is wrongheaded on so many levels and the source of my frustration with environmentalism.
Well I don’t think it’s necessarily a bogus issue. I was kind of taking the other view, that people building a fence to keep out darkies are probably building it high enough to actually make it hard for a human to cross, which means it probably would cause problems for furry friends as well.
People don’t realize how much waste an ocelot will leave on unused property as they are migrating through. Think of the danger to drinking water reserves.
Seems like a fence would be more likely to keep illegals from getting back at this point, now that the jobs are drying up they have no reason to stay here.
