The term “crisis” also describes the border with Mexico. Water that once flowed, wildlife that needs to roam, and religious pilgrims — none know political boundaries. Yet to build this wall, vegetation was wiped away, roads bulldozed over mountains, waterways blocked and groundwater depleted by pumping. Lighting that never goes off has been installed on top of steel barriers 30 feet high.

Animals have been blocked from migration, their food chains disrupted. Now, exotic weeds, insects and diseases can use the lengthy scar as a nick point for invasion, ultimately disrupting far more than what human border-crossers can do. 

Meanwhile, the many people involved in borderland alliances have learned hard lessons from this wall, and the lessons need to be shared.

First, any effort to protect and restore what’s been harmed must engage the First Nations of this continent, who still live along one-fifth of the border, from San Diego to Brownsville.

Any “environmental protection” coalition that lacks Native American elders and professionals among its leaders will not get far. Vice President Kamala Harris and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland need to ensure that all agencies err on the side of more inclusiveness and environmental justice for all.

Second, when we neglect to listen to the voices of ranchers, farmers and other private land stewards along the border, everyone stands to lose. 

Coalitions involving tough Texas property owners did far better at getting some concessions from Homeland Security than did coalitions in other states. At first, federal agency professionals and activists largely dismissed the concerns of ranchers and farmers who said they wanted better border security, but not a 30-foot wall.

In southeastern Arizona, the situation was different. As early as 2010, the Malpai Borderlands Group in Southeastern Arizona and adjacent New Mexico developed and implemented a tight border security plan. But its on-ground success was ignored by Homeland Security’s right-wing ideologues and discounted by left-wing activists who opposed any form of border security.

Third, we need to rally people around concerns that are universally shared. One is the need to better protect artesian springs and flowing watercourses from groundwater pumping and blockage of stream flows.  At least 80% of all neotropical birds and bats migrating between the U.S. and Mexico rely on wetland stopovers on or near the border. These water sources are also crucial to ranchers’ livestock, farmers’ food crop irrigation and local wildlife, especially as severe to exceptional drought affects every Western state. 

Unfortunately, border activists failed to sufficiently recruit the support of food producers and waterfowl enthusiasts on the corridors north and south of the border to protect these vulnerable links. Now, we need their support to remove wall segments and floodgates that block transborder streams and wildlife movement.

Finally, one of our effective strategies for building broader coalitions to eke out some concessions was to link the protection of sacred sites at the border to constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms granted to all Americans.

We rallied support of intertribal and interfaith organizations to denounce the way the wall would impact spiritual sanctuaries along the border, from Quitobaquito to La Lomita Chapel. Spiritual leaders themselves should now direct the restoration of sanctuaries that were damaged in several states. And in Organ Pipe National Monument, cultural properties need to be fully returned to — or co-managed with — the Tohono O’odham and Hia-ced O’odham.

Many O’odham and Kumeyaay youth put their lives at risk to protect their “places of the heart” while agency professionals stood meekly aside.

Since then, the Tohono O’odham Legislative Council has passed a resolution granting “sacred personhood” to all saguaros in their aboriginal homelands. This puts agencies on notice that the mutilation of thousands of cacti will never happen again on their watch. 

I believe that United States, Mexican and First Nations peoples can work together to heal the wounds in the border landscapes in ways that heal the divisions among us as well.

It’s time to start. Gary Paul Nabhan is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a Franciscan Brother, conservation biologist, writer and agrarian activist living in the borderlands.

The post Hard lessons from the border appeared first on Writers On The Range.

Most of the families I know that live close to the border have arrived at the same conclusion: The monstrous wall so close to them has further militarized our international boundary with Mexico. They say that a steel barrier with a yard-wide concrete footer — and lighting that never dims — permanently blocks the free flow of wildlife, seeds, pollen, water, religious pilgrims and essential workers across the U.S.-Mexico border. We have watched U. S. agencies rush to build a wall through the poorest communities in western North America without local consent.

Both supporters and opponents of this bigger wall speak fatalistically about the barrier. They seem to concede that more miles of wall are irreversible because the courts have upheld Trump’s legal waivers of 41 state and federal laws.

Meanwhile, the wall does damage wherever it’s built or expanded. Habitats for endangered species have been fragmented, and human remains in sacred sites have been desecrated. The doom-and-gloomers say there is no going back.

But one needs to read only a bit of world history to realize that walls can come down as a quickly as they were put up.

Thirty years ago this last November, the Berlin Wall was demolished after 26 years of dividing Berlin and East Germany from West Germany. Its deconstruction cost far less than its original construction, thanks in part to eager people who pitched in to turn the concrete part of the wall back into rubble. The two sections of Berlin have now been reunited for a longer period of time than the construction of the wall in 1961 divided them.

Closer to home, the first barrier built on our southern border, dividing Nogales Arizona from Nogales Sonora, came tumbling down faster than

the walls at the Battle of Jericho. This wall was erected a little over a century ago, during the time that Mexico was in the depths of a revolution.

American-made rifles were frequently smuggled into Sonora through Ambos Nogales. To slow the flow of firearms, Sonora’s Gov. Maytorena ordered the erection of an 11- strand barbwire fence to run down the middle of International Street, where the two countries met.

Yes. That’s right: The first border barrier along the boundary line was erected to keep U.S. citizens from illegally passing rifles into Mexico.

But that first border wall so enraged the community of Ambos Nogales that it was brought down within a mere four months of its being erected. As soon as Gen. Obregón defeated Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa in Nogales, Sonora, in 1915, he ordered the 11-strand fence torn down.

Regardless of your political stance about our current border policies, it is time that we recognize that a permanent border wall is not a fait accompli. The pandemic has reminded us what a true “national emergency” is, and a hyped-up emergency at the border does not justify such environmental and economic costs.

If we don’t want it, it can be legally deauthorized, once again allowing surface waters to flow. Dozens of species of wildlife now threatened by habitat fragmentation could once again migrate, and seeds could tumble across the desert floor.

A debate is already underway about how the wall should be deconstructed, how its materials could be recycled, how sacred sites along its pathway would be reconsecrated, and how damaged natural habitats could at last be restored.

I live just 14 miles as the crow flies from the Arizona-Sonora, Mexico, border, and though no one can predict when the times will dramatically change, it is never too early to consider the possibility that this foolish wall will fall.

It is already time to support a broad-based “Border Wall De-Commission,” one with United States, Mexican and tribal nation representatives. Let us

now envision and restore a more just and humane future along our border with Mexico, and with trans-border tribes.

The post The wall with Mexico will come tumbling down appeared first on Writers On The Range.