Thread: Animal expert worries that birds won’t be able to fly over the border wall

Animal expert worries that birds won’t be able to fly over the border wall

POSTED AT 10:41 AM ON APRIL 17, 2017 BY JAZZ SHAW

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Our colleague Matt Vespa picked this up at Townhall over the weekend but I still find myself marveling at it today. The prospect of President Trump building a Great Wall on our southern border continues to divide the nation along partisan lines and it seems as if everyone has to weigh in on the subject. And I mean everybody. MSNBC recently ran a segment where biologist and television “animal guy” Jeff Corwin put in his two cents. The wall is a bad idea, you see, because birds and bats might not be able to fly over it.

“It would be an unprecedented environmental catastrophe,” said Corwin to host Craig Melvin.

Melvin began the segments discussing Rep. Raul Graijalva (D-AZ) and the Center for Biological Diversity’s lawsuit against the federal government over the border enforcement project. In California, the state legislature is considering punishing construction firms that participate in building the wall.

You’ll really have to watch this for yourself. (It’s less than three minutes long.)

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To be fair, Corwin isn’t just talking about flying creatures. He mentions that the Mexican Gray Wolf and the Jaguar inhabit the border region. But they’re not really “migratory” animals, now are they? And the environment isn’t particularly different on either side. But it’s his point about birds and bats which really caught everyone’s attention. Even the highly liberal MSNBC host had to stop him there and ask, “um… couldn’t the birds fly over it?”

The respected animal expert responded by saying that was a “very good question” but then went on to say that many of the birds and bats fly quite low to the ground when seeking food. Pardon me, but this just flies in the face of reality and you would think that Corwin would know better. He has bachelor of science degrees in biology and anthropology as well as a master of science in wildlife and fisheries conservation, specializing in work on bats and snakes.

Most of the plans we’ve seen proposed thus far have the wall at a maximum height of somewhere in the 20 foot range. That’s lower than your average two story house. Have you ever seen any birds (or bats for that matter) that can’t fly over a house when they need to? I don’t see birds crashing into my house either… at least the non-glass parts of it. Large windows are a problem for birds to be sure, but I don’t think the guys designing the wall are working on any large picture windows to improve the view.

And… bats? Seriously? Bats operate on sonar and they don’t even fly into windows. If they need to go over the wall they will somehow manage the feat.

What we’re actually seeing here is an attempt at stalling and cost expansion from the Democrats. The video segment above is introduced with a call from one Democrat to force a full “environmental impact study” before construction begins which will simply run out the clock and add to the total bill. (Amazingly, Democrats began noticing what things cost on January 21st of this year in case you missed it.) In support of that effort, MSNBC is dragging in any “expert” they can find to support this latest initiative. It’s no shock that Corwin answered the call, but his argument is the thing that’s crashing into a wall, not the bats.

http://hotair.com/archives/2017/04/1...tm_campaign=nl

What next?

I support the wall, but there's no question it will affect wildlife. But so does all development, all that urban sprawl, all this population growth, imagine how much habitat has been lost due to illegal and massive legal immigration population growth in the United States.

I would prefer to put manpower on the border which would not interfere with wildlife, but people seem to prefer the wall, and we need one of the other. We can't leave it the way it is and expect to stop illegal immigration into the US.

So unless Cornyn and all the other anti-wall Republicans substitute 40,000 border guards to supplement border agents to secure that border 24/7/365, then they are against the wall because they support illegal immigration and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with the birds or bats or the wolf or anything other wonderful creature.

Judy wrote (excerpt):

I would prefer to put manpower on the border which would not interfere with wildlife, but people seem to prefer the wall, and we need one of the other. We can't leave it the way it is and expect to stop illegal immigration into the US.

Actually we need both.

What does the wall do for you that manpower wouldn't do better? Or do you just like paying twice for the same result?

Wow!!! There must be some really lazy birds along the border...the ones that fly around my house can go WAY over 20 feet!!!

Originally Posted by Judy

What does the wall do for you that manpower wouldn't do better? Or do you just like paying twice for the same result?

I'm not even going to dignify that question with a response.