WaPo doesn’t even try to hide its advocacy:
Researchers Fear Southern Fence Will Endanger Species Further
The debate over the fence the United States is building along its southern border has focused largely on the project’s costs, feasibility and how well it will curb illegal immigration. But one of its most lasting impacts may well be on the animals and vegetation that make this politically fraught landscape their home.Some wildlife researchers have grown so concerned about the consequences of bisecting hundreds of miles of rugged habitat that they have talked of engaging in civil disobedience to block the fence’s construction.
“This wall is so asinine, and so wrong, I am one of a dozen scientists ready to lay our bodies down in front of tractors,” Healy Hamilton, who directs the Center for Biodiversity Research and Information at the California Academy of Sciences, told colleagues at a recent scientific retreat in Tucson. “This is one thing we might be able to stop.”
WaPo ignores a problem so big even NPR addresses it, although NPR still manages to give it at least some spin. Illegal immigrants are trashing delicate ecosystems and endangering wildlife as they cross the border.
It’s not like this is the first time this sort of thing has been reported. But do those massive piles of trash – some knee deep – and illegal border crossers actually affect animals? Why, yes. They do:
Some 900,000 people are caught each year trying to sneak into the United States. Their efforts to reach the United States drive them into protected desert lands, where they crowd out wildlife at watering holes and destroy and trash habitat. Mike Coffeen, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Tucson, Arizona, is quoted as saying, while surveying the area by airplane: “the level of impact is just shocking.”
Illegal immigrants trying to get to the United States via the Mexican border with southern Arizona are suspected of having caused eight major wildfires this year, this report says. The fires destroyed 68,413 acres (about 108 square miles) and cost taxpayers $5.1 million to fight.
The environmental damage is serious:
“I can’t do it justice with words,” DiRosa said. “I would say that if the Cabeza Prieta were being considered for wilderness status today, it would not qualify, [because] it is so damaged.”
Of course, it’s difficult to even assess the real impact because illegal immigration is causing scientists to abandon their research in the desert.
As for WaPo – they’re not interested in the negative impact of illegal immigration. It’s always the same semi-hysterical screed from them:
