Thread: Hundreds people needed to clean up border ranches

Lorraine Rivera Reports
Hundreds people needed to clean up border ranches

Posted: March 13, 2008 04:10 PM PDT

On King's Anvil Ranch along Highway 286 there's a spot of desert littered with trash left behind by illegal immigrants. The mess is repeated in multiple areas of the 50,000 acre ranch. It's a problem for the owners and lately an issue for Arizona Game and Fish.

Gabriel Paz has been an officer for 11 years. He grew up in Tucson, even frequented the Altar Valley. "Hunting 25 years ago I never remember finding any trash out here in the desert."

Things are different now. Here you can find everything from backpacks to clothes, cans to diapers even a letter from a little girl to her father asking him to be careful.

Paz said twice a year the agency scans the area with their plane looking for trash sites. "Flying over it looks like a dump. You start seeing all the different colors coming out at you."

And twice a year, people volunteer to clean up the hundreds - if not thousands of pounds of trash left behind by illegal immigrants. "We can clean this area in the spring, come back in the fall depending on how the Border Patrol does their patrols... Tt can increase or decrease," he said.

This trail is well traveled, the belongings look fresh, and so do the tracks.

Law enforcement labels spots like these as "lay ups." We found one next to a stock pond, a place where livestock and wildlife visit daily. For animals the trash is dangerous. "All that material is foreign to their body and it can get stuck in their bodies and effect their digestive system from some animals and it can kill them."

We watch a cow pick up a backpack and a can with its mouth before spitting it out. The ranch owner John said it doesn't stop there; calves often step on aluminum cans piercing their skin.

And for Paz, endangering wildlife is why every year hundreds of people volunteer to clean up trash in the Altar and Arivaca Valleys. It's a way to preserve nature.

Ranch Clean Up is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, March 15 and 16 beginning at 7:00 a.m. Volunteers are meeting at the Three Points Veterans Park on Highway 286 at milepost 44. For more information you can contact Lance Altherr at azhunterswhocare@hotmail.com or Officer Gabriel Paz at 520.883.0487 or gpaz@azgfd.gov.







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http://www.kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=8013815&nav=HMO6

We should send emails to all of the open border groups and ask them to hold their May 1 marches here and do a little cleanup while there.

once the fence gets built, throw the trash back over the border.

i wonder if there is a way to clean and sterilize what can be saved, and then donated to a homeless shelter or salvation army or places like that

Put the illegals in jails out there to clean it up.

Originally Posted by jean

Put the illegals in jails out there to clean it up.

Exactly and while they're there, they can deport them since they are so close to the border already.

I wonder if I could get some help cleaning the trash they leave on my place too?

Originally Posted by MountainDog

I wonder if I could get some help cleaning the trash they leave on my place too?

How bout an Alipacer BBQ and cleanup at your place this 4th of July