Thread: AZ: Buenos Aires NWR on list of 10 most imperiled

Buenos Aires on list of 10 most imperiled
Brady McCombs



BUENOS AIRES NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, AZ — A spider web of more than 1,500 linear miles of foot trails slices through this refuge’s semidesert grasslands that are home to deer, javelinas and gray hawks in the Altar Valley, southwest of Tucson.

At least 10 miles of unauthorized dirt roads have been created within the refuge by Border Patrol agents and smugglers.

Plastic water bottles, clothes and plastic food bags pile up in areas under low-lying mesquite trees. An abandoned pickup truck sits 16 miles north of the border in an area so remote that officials can’t tow it out.

Being located in one of the busiest corridors for illegal immigration and drug smuggling on the U.S.-Mexico border has put the 118,000-acre Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge at center stage of the daily duel between smugglers trying to get their loads into the country and Border Patrol agents trying to catch them.

Nearly a decade of this activity has left scars on the refuge and has landed it on an undesirable Top 10 list — the most imperiled national wildlife refuges in the country, according to a report by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The list, which doesn’t rank the 10 sites, also includes the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, in Southwestern Arizona.

It’s the second time each refuge has been included in a dubious Top 10 list of this type. Defenders of Wildlife named Buenos Aires among the 10 refuges most at risk in 2005, and Cabeza Prieta in 2004.

This is the first list published by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

In total, the National Wildlife Refuge System encompasses more than 540 refuges in all 50 states.

The report emphasized damage done at both refuges by border fencing and illegal roads created by Border Patrol agents who use sport utility vehicles, Humvees and all-terrain vehicles.

The refuges’ imperiled status is a direct result of the federal government’s failed strategies that have “militarizedâ€

Refuge officials have placed temporary vehicle barriers on the north side of the road near the entrance to keep agents from parking and turning around there, she said.

Obstruction of justice and they themselves are guilty of introducing a non-natural barrier.

Instead of attacking border agents, go to the source of the problem--the Mexican government. Tell it to stop illegal aliens from entering our country. Protest outside the Mexican consulates.

National wildlife refuges are for the purpose of protecting wildlife, not illegal aliens. Illegal aliens are dangerous, not endangered.

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.
Franklin D. Roosevelt