Lawsuit Launched Against Arizona Plan to Block Jaguar Migration With Shipping Containers

UngulateNerd92

UngulateNerd92

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The Center for Biological Diversity today filed a notice of intent to sue Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s administration to challenge plans to obstruct a critical jaguar and ocelot migration corridor with shipping containers along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“These shipping containers are a shameless publicity stunt that will jeopardize the survival of endangered wildlife,” said Robin Silver, a co-founder of the Center. “There are 3,700 agents covering the Tucson Sector alone, not to mention helicopters, drones and hundreds of cameras. We’re in an extinction crisis, and it’s reckless to sacrifice a critical wildlife corridor and harm endangered animals so Ducey can score political points.”

Lawsuit Launched Against Arizona Plan to Block Jaguar Migration With Shipping Containers
 
I don't have anything nice to say about this, so I'll stick with not saying anything at all. I don't even know where I would begin, anyways.
 
The headline is a bit misleading once you read the press release (which is not that long). The shipping containers that have been placed so far are next to Yuma on the West Arizona-East California border. This is open desert and sand dunes and is nowhere near the jaguar-ocelot corridor (which is in East Arizona). However it says the notice to sue is anticipating plans to add shipping containers in this eastern section. Certainly this would be detrimental to land mammals (birds will be fine) if it goes through, so we can hope it does not.

The only time I see Center for Biological Diversity in the news is when they are filing a lawsuit. I assume (and hope) their work entails more than this, but as a casual observer it seems they are merely a litigious body. Is there a need for this in conservation? Maybe. The border wall issue is contentious and there are no easy answers. The illegal migrants who cross leave mounds (and I mean mounds) of garbage in arroyos along the southern border, so having no wall is not entirely eco-friendly either. It is also a known fact that drug smugglers use these routes; this is not right-wing conspirancy or fear-mongering, it is fact.

While our current Republican governer Doug Ducey is something of a far right Trump loyalist, he is mild in comparison to Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governer in the current election (to be decided in a week). I imagine if she is elected plans for border walls will proceed at full speed. (I haven't been following it, but I think the race is very close currently).
 
Here is another relevant article.

The environmental consequences of Gov. Ducey’s rogue ‘border wall’

Slicing across Arizona’s Coronado National Memorial, the barrier will stop more migrating mammals than humans.

In early November, I stood in the shade of Arizona’s unauthorized “border wall,” a crude line of over 200 8,000-pound shipping containers. I watched a grasshopper on the dirt access road springing up, trying repeatedly to clear the new, mysterious barrier. As hard as it tried, it could not fly high enough. The scene reminded me of a sad Pixar short, except that there was no happy ending or even a narrative arc. The grasshopper was simply stuck — confused.

does not have the approval of the federal government. While Ducey intended it to be a display of defiance against the Biden administration, the wall is underwhelming: the containers are in poor condition, and the lack of government oversight makes the scene feel farcical. Still, as the perplexed insect attested, it has significant environmental consequences for one of the world’s most unique ecosystems.

The environmental consequences of Gov. Ducey’s rogue ‘border wall’
 
For those outside Arizona, after an extended counting of votes and a close call, Democrat Katie Hobbs has beaten Republican Kari Lake for governor in last week's election. Kari Lake is a female version of Donald Trump, perhaps the most extremist Republican besides Trump himself, and of course she is refusing to concede and claiming the election is fraudulent. Hopefully with Hobbs at the helm we will be able to put off the border wall insanity for a few years. In another close call with extended counting, Democrat Mark Kelly won the one Arizona Senate seat that was up this term, helping to make the Senate a narrow one seat Democrat majority. The House of Representatives, on the other hand, has flipped from a narrow Democrat majority to a narrow Republican majority. So things here in American politics will continue to be interesting.
 
Here is another relevant article.

Help Stop Illegal Border-Wall Construction

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is building a wall of shipping containers along the Arizona-Mexico border for “national security.” This dangerous obstruction runs down the southwestern slopes of the Huachuca Mountains across the San Rafael Valley to the west in the Coronado National Forest. Construction crews have already placed 800 containers over more than three miles. This reckless and illegal construction on federal public land is causing great environmental harm, including blocking critical migratory paths for endangered jaguars and ocelots.

Help Stop Illegal Border-Wall Construction
 
The governor will be out of office within a month and replaced by a newly elected Democrat (even though her Republican Trumpite challenger is still alleging the election results are fraudulent). Hopefully this will put an end to the border containers (for four years at least).
 
Arizona Docent said:
The governor will be out of office within a month and replaced by a newly elected Democrat (even though her Republican Trumpite challenger is still alleging the election results are fraudulent). Hopefully this will put an end to the border containers (for four years at least).
Click to expand...

We'll see... As far as I understand, Governor-elect Katie Hobbs seems skeptical about removing Governor Ducey's shipping container barriers, expressing concerns about the cost of removal. I believe she is still open to it though.
 
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Here is another relevant article. This is a great question being posed! Why isn't President Biden stepping in and stopping it? This construction took place on federal land, so Governor Ducey was breaking the law.

AZ Governor Builds Illegal “Border Wall” of Shipping Containers & Razor Wire. Why Isn’t Biden Stopping It?

Outgoing Republican Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona is spending nearly $100 million in his final weeks in office to erect a makeshift border wall along the state’s southern boundary with Mexico made of shipping containers and razor wire. Ducey has described it as an effort to complete former President Donald Trump’s border wall, but the shipping containers are being placed on federal and tribal lands without permission. Protesters who have tried to block construction warn the wall is destroying precious desert biodiversity and forcing asylum seekers to take even more dangerous routes along the border to seek refuge in the United States. Meanwhile, it is unclear what Democratic Governor-elect Katie Hobbs will do with the container wall once she is sworn in. “It’s quite amazing that there’s simply been no [federal] law enforcement response,” says Myles Traphagen with Wildlands Network, who coordinates the group’s borderlands program. “Why aren’t they mobilizing a federal law enforcement response when this is a blatant disregard of the law?” We also speak with Alejandra Gomez, executive director of Living United for Change in Arizona, or LUCHA Arizona, who says immigrant communities in Arizona are responding with aid and compassion despite “the fueling of hate against migrants” by Ducey and other Republicans.

AZ Governor Builds Illegal “Border Wall” of Shipping Containers & Razor Wire. Why Isn’t Biden Stopping It? | Democracy Now!
 
Here is another relevant article.

Lawsuit Launched to Stop Arizona Border Shipping Containers From Damming Streams, Washes

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a
notice today of its intent to sue Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s administration and state contractor AshBritt, Inc., for violating federal law by blocking streams and washes along the U.S.-Mexico border with hundreds of shipping containers.

“These giant pieces of trash are damming streams that feed the San Pedro River, a desert oasis that’s already in danger of drying up,” said Robin Silver, a co-founder of the Center. “Ducey’s shameful political stunt will starve the Southwest’s last free-flowing river of water, further jeopardizing one of Arizona’s crown jewels and an international birding mecca. This is another stark reminder that this governor has never cared about Arizona.”

Water flows off the Huachuca Mountains to the south across the border, feeding the headwaters of the San Pedro. The river then winds north into the U.S. and provides one of the last, best riparian corridors for numerous plants and animals, including hundreds of species of migrating birds. The southern section in Arizona has been protected as the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

Lawsuit Launched to Stop Arizona Border Shipping Containers From Damming Streams, Washes
 
Check out a map of Arizona’s rouge shipping container border wall

Myles Traphagen has visited the construction sites of Arizona Governor Doug Ducey’s shipping container border wall numerous times since construction began in October.

It was immediately apparent that the project was causing extensive destruction,” said Traphagen, Wildlands Network’s Borderlands Program Coordinator, who is based in Tucson. “I watched native Emory oak and alligator juniper trees being bulldozed as this 'junkyard wall’ snaked its way further and further through this landscape, which is designated critical habitat for the endangered jaguar.”

Using satellite imagery, GPS coordinates and on-the-ground reports, Traphagen diligently recorded the daily developments as the containers were trucked in and stacked double, starting at the western edge of Coronado National Memorial.

Check out a map of Arizona’s rouge shipping container border wall  — Wildlands Network
 
Here is another relevant article from the Intercept.

How neighbors in the borderlands fought back against arizona gov. doug ducey’s illegal wall — and won

The Biden administration is doing nothing to stop the environmental destruction wrought by Arizona’s construction of a shipping container wall.

Michael and Christie Brown resisted putting a barrier around their beloved desert home for years, but the nights were getting too dangerous. It was a question of safety. They needed a fence.

The Browns live 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, on the southeastern edge of Sierra Vista, in Cochise County, Arizona. Like many of their neighbors at the foot of the rugged Huachuca Mountains, the Browns’s worry was javelinas, tenacious borderland omnivores often mistaken for wild pigs. Their dogs had been attacked. Their garden was in peril. Javelina damage keeps the Browns up at night. A purported wave of migrants laying siege to their community does not.

In late October, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey began unloading thousands of shipping containers on the border in the Coronado National Forest to thwart a supposed “invasion” on the Browns’ doorstep. Topped with concertina wire and welded together, the nearly 9,000-pound boxes would be stacked two high on land where the retirees chop wood every winter, where they took their sons hiking and camping as kids, and where they still hike and camp to this day. In the early 2000s, they saw evidence of heavy migration through the area — discarded desert clothes, empty water jugs, trash — but it hadn’t been like that in more than a decade.

On October 26, two days after Ducey’s project began, the Browns got in their truck and set off to see the shipping containers for themselves. They descended a rocky road east of the picturesque San Rafael Valley, then turned south toward Mexico. As they neared the border, they were stopped at an ad hoc checkpoint. A bald man, dressed in black with body armor and reflective sunglasses, approached. He wore no insignia and refused to say who he worked for. Michael asked if he could drive up to the containers and take some photos. The guard said he could not. Michael asked him why.

“I’m not answering any more questions, sir,” the guard replied.

How Neighbors in the Borderlands Fought Back Against Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s Illegal Wall — and Won
 
Here is another relevant article with a promising update.

Gov. Ducey to remove border shipping containers

Republican Gov. Doug Ducey has agreed to remove all the shipping containers he installed along the border.

But his press aide insists Ducey is not caving in to a lawsuit filed against Arizona by the Biden administration, threatening to remove the barrier and then bill the state. In fact, the governor's spokesman C.J. Karamargin said the deal actually is a victory because it gets Ducey what he wanted all along: a commitment by Washington to start closing gaps in the existing wall.

Ducey promised to take out not just the containers near Yuma but all “associated equipment, materials, vehicles and other objects” from the property of the United States by Jan. 4, “to the extent feasible and so as not to cause damage to United States’ land, properties and natural resources,” a stipulation filed in federal court Wednesday shows.

Gov. Ducey to remove border shipping containers
 
Here is another relevant article.

How a Small Band of Environmentalists Stopped Former Arizona Governor Ducey’s Illegal Border Wall

On August 12 of last year, Arizona’s then-governor, Republican Doug Ducey, began what some critics have called an insurrection against the United States.

Of course, that word isn’t found anywhere in Ducey’s Executive Order 2022-04. Instead, after the 37th “WHEREAS,” the governor’s THEREFORE announced his intention to “fill the gaps” in former President Trump’s border wall, including (and here’s the insurrection part) on federal land, where the state has no jurisdiction. Ducey ended his EO with a tough-guy flourish directed at the Feds: He authorized the Arizona National Guard to enforce his order if necessary.

Some thought the executive order was a political stunt, a bluff designed to get the Biden administration to fulfill its pledge to plug some still-unwalled sections in the most heavily crossed US-Mexico border areas in Arizona. It might have been a stunt—but it soon became clear it wasn’t a bluff.

A few hours after the executive order was issued, a convoy of giant excavators, military tactical trucks weighing nearly 20 tons, bulldozers, and cranes lumbered onto a strip of federal land managed by the US Bureau of Reclamation outside of Yuma, Arizona. Three months earlier, Ducey had quietly contracted with AshBritt, a scandal-plagued Florida disaster-response company, to build his makeshift border wall. Soon, AshBritt workers were double stacking dozens of old shipping containers, each 40 feet long and weighing nearly 9,000 pounds, and topping them off with razor wire.

The result looked less like an official border wall than the kind of barrier you might find at a junkyard. Only less stable. Three days after construction started, one of the stacks was discovered in the middle of the night lying on the ground, where it had nearly rolled into an irrigation canal. A Ducey spokesman claimed, without any evidence, that the collapse was an act of sabotage by enemies of the state. “We clearly struck a nerve,” spun C.J. Karamargin. Someone apparently doesn't like what we're doing.”

One community that didn’t like what Ducey was doing was the Cocopah Indian Tribe, a sovereign nation that has existed in the area on both sides of the border for centuries and whose reservation land abuts the container wall. Tribal officials complained to the governor’s office that the containers partially blocked a road used by the tribe for emergency vehicles and cut in two their binational community. The governor’s office refused to respond.

Some Arizona taxpayers also objected to the project’s price tag. Ducey claimed that the Yuma section cost $6 million. But when a copy of the contract with AshBritt leaked, the true cost turned out to be $12.6 million. People complained bitterly. What critics didn’t realize was that Yuma was just the beginning of Ducey’s plan.

How a Small Band of Environmentalists Stopped Former Arizona Governor Ducey’s Illegal Border Wall
 
Here is another relevant article.

Drone Footage Reveals Complete Removal of Arizona’s Rogue Border Wall

New aerial imagery gathered by Wildlands Network confirms that ex-Arizona Governor Doug Ducey’s shipping container border wall has been removed in its entirety from the San Rafael Valley in the Coronado National Forest.

Within days after construction began on the shipping container wall on October 24th, 2022, Wildlands Network’s borderlands program coordinator, Myles Traphagen, created a map that he updated several times a week to track the progress of the wall. Using satellite imagery, on-the-ground daily reports and drone flights, he shared the dynamic map with agency officials, media, activists and concerned public citizens.

Drone Footage Reveals Complete Removal of Arizona’s Rogue Border Wall — Wildlands Network
 
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