When I first heard the news that the Bush administration and its Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff planned to circumvent a host of environmental laws in order to effect the completion of the “Great Wall of Bush” dividing the U.S. from Mexico, I knew that various crimes against nature would soon be committed. The wait was not long before the first one saw the light of day.
It appears that one particular section of the wall near Brownsville, Texas will not only wreak ecological destruction of the ordinary sort, its construction will forever close the history book on the last stand of Sabal Palm forest remaining in the United States. According to Christopher Sherman reporting for the Austin American-Statesman, the Sabal Palm Audubon Center and most of The Nature Conservancy’s Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve would end up in the no-man’s land between the fence and Mexico.
Once, not so very long ago, the majority of the eastern edge of the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas was covered with thick Sabal Palm forests – reminiscent of the type you’d see in the old black-and-white jungle adventure movies – a far cry from the mesquite barrens that are now the dominant landscape of the valley. The Sabal Palm Audubon Center is the very last remaining of this rich ecosystem in the U.S. Once walled off, the invasive species of plan will invade, wildfires will cut through the area, and never again will the United States know the splendors of this verdant reminder of what once was on its own soil.
Like so very many bird watchers and naturalists who have spent time in the lower Rio Grande Valley, I have visited the Sabal Palm Audubon Center – many times, in fact. Checking my life list, I am reminded that sixteen of my life birds were listed there:
Least Grebe (Tachybaptus dominicus)
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron (Nyctanassa violacea)
Plain Chachalaca (Ortalis vetula)
Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus)
Common Ground-Dove (Columbina passerine)
White-tipped Dove (Leptotila verreauxi)
Groove-billed Ani (Crotophaga sulcirostris)
Buff-bellied Hummingbird (Amazilia yucatanensis)
Ladder-backed Woodpecker (Picoides scalaris)
Nashville Warbler (Vermivora ruficapilla)
Yellow-throated Warbler (Dendroica dominica)
Worm-eating Warbler (Helmitheros vermivorus)
Mourning Warbler (Oporornis Philadelphia)
Olive Sparrow (Arremonops rufivirgatus)
Altamira Oriole (Icterus gularis)
Hooded Oriole (Icterus cucullatus)
I remember each one of these birds. The Groove-billed Ani was spotted while I was with a group standing in the parking area just outside of the center’s little hut that serves as its office. I personally sighted the Yellow-throated and the Worm-eating Warblers and called them out to each of the respective groups I was with at the time. As I was a new bird watcher at the time of the Yellow-throated Warbler, I was particularly proud of this sighting as it was the first time I had felt confident enough to call out to a group of far more experienced birders a bird that was a life bird for me. The knowledge that I will never be able to return there – to take my daughter there someday and retrace the steps I first took as a fledgling bird watcher myself – is a bitter pill to swallow.
Secretary Chertoff and the Bush administration are taking such drastic action at this time to bypass more than 30 environmental laws and regulations that could impede construction of the fence in order, as the Secretary said “to avoid unnecessary delays and litigation;” or, to put it another way, the rightful questions and activities of citizens who oppose the action to challenge the governments right to do so in court. Adding insult to environmental injury, the Secretary went on to promise “to be a good steward of the environment.” Only if one travels far through the looking glass is such tortured logic possible.
Almost needless to say, I encourage all who have ever visited the Sabal Palm Audubon Center, all birders who have ever recorded a life bird there, all photographers who have ever taken a photo there, all naturalists who have ever spent time contemplating the mysteries of nature there, and all others who simply care more about the environment than they fear the bogey straw men set up by the Bush administration to justify their every action regardless of consequence, to write their respective senators and congressional representatives. Tell them why this wall is a bad idea – if not in general then at least in this location as it is planned.
This wall is only one in a series of actions on the part of the Bush administration in their practice of the politics of fear – justifing everything on the grounds that there are “bad people” out there who want to do harm to the citizens of the United States. Yes, there are bad and even downright evil people in the world; there always have been and likely always will be. But we cannot act out of fear when making decisions that will irrevocably harm the environment to which we have already done so much damage (or in making any other decision for that matter). We must care more for the environment that sustains us all than we fear the few who wish us harm. Just as a flock of birds acting together can mob an owl out of the area, acting together we have the potential to stop this wall from destroying this last remaining vestige of an otherwise vanished American ecosystem.
Peace and good bird watching.
