In the past, this blog has followed the sad developments of the building of a wall along the U.S./Mexico border — an ill-advised project that will not only harm and divide human communities, but one that will undoubtedly have a profound impact on wildlife in places like the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.

In response to this impact, the International League of Conservation Photographers is embarking on a mission to record the human and ecological impacts of the wall. According to the League’s website:

In early 2009, the International League of Conservation Photographers plans to send a team of world-renowned photographers, with writers, filmmakers, and scientists to the borderlands of the United States and Mexico to document the wildlife, ecology, and effect of immigration and the border wall on this landscape. This region is a shared conservation treasure of international importance that harbors some of the most biodiverse landscapes on the continent. Many species here are found nowhere else in the US, and nowhere else in Mexico and some are found nowhere else on Earth.

The borderlands of the United States and Mexico harbor a hidden gem. These remote wildlands that stretch from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico across the belly of North America provide safe haven for many wild species of plant and animals. Because much of the landscape around this international border has remained isolated for so long, many relatively intact and continentally rare ecosystems endure here—including Arizona’s last free flowing river, the San Pedro; some of the last undeveloped grasslands on the continent in the Janos/Hidalgo area along the New Mexico border; the single most diverse birding area in the United States along the Lower Rio Grande river, and habitat and migration corridors for some of both nation’s most imperiled species including the jaguar, Sonoran pronghorn, ocelot, bighorn sheep and Mexican gray wolves.

Visit the International League of Conservation Photographers to support their project and to learn more about their efforts.

Also view this YouTube video that features the wildlife, landscapes and people of the borderlands of the United States and Mexico, and which was posted by one of the people working with the International League of Conservation Photographers.

Despite the massive impact of the wall, and the many environmental laws that the Bush administration waived in order to build it, even Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff doesn’t seemed convinced it will make much of a difference in achieving national security. From the Texas Observer:

Last July, Chertoff (Secretary of Homeland Security) told CNN’s Late Edition that “fencing has a symbolic value, and it has usefulness in some parts of the border. And we’re going to use it where it is effective. The idea that you are going to solve the problem simply by building a fence is undercut by the fact that yesterday we discovered a tunnel. So the idea that fencing alone is a solution I think is overly simplistic.”

Tags:
wildlife, wildlife refuge, border wall, International League of Conservation Photographers, Mexico, Texas