The morning sun lights up saguaro cactus and the Tinajas Altas mountains. Photo by Kevin Schafer.
Backlit cholla cactus. Photo by Chris Linder.
Species like the bighorn sheep travel the entire Tinajas Altas range, which spans the US-Mexico border. Photo by Krista Schlyer.
Krista Schlyer walks along the border wall. Photo by Chris Linder.
A segment of the US border wall in the Barry Goldwater Range. Photo by Roy Toft.
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Steel Scar by Krista Schlyer
January 27, 2009
This morning, in the Tinajas Altas pass, a sandy wash recorded a recent battle. Tiny rodent feet and feline paws made depressions in the otherwise featureless white sand. Within about 15 lateral feet, the tracks became erratic before melding into one chaotic mess of disturbed sand. No question about the victor here, a bobcat, whose tracks moved on alone from the battlefield.
These tracks were our most significant interaction with wildlife today; we saw flashes of antelope ground squirrel, a basking lizard, and skittish birds darting from perch to perch, filling the desert sky with song. But despite nearly 10 hours in a photographic blind and a seven-mile hike, we have not encountered bighorn sheep or pronghorn or cats. Not that we can expect to in our three days here in the Barry Goldwater Range in southwestern Arizona. Remaining hidden is too essential to survival for these large mammals, and this landscape is vast and harsh despite its incredible beauty.
Temperatures can hover well over 110 degrees in the summer, and plants can live for months or even years without significant rainfall. And for the past 15 years, creatures here have had to deal with all the automobiles and trash that have accompanied the surge of illegal border traffic that followed the tightening of border security in urban areas.
Today, in addition to putting time into the blind, our best hope for capturing images of wildlife, we spent our time documenting the wall that many fear will make survival here even harder.
For all desert animals, getting to water sources they have trusted for millennia means the difference between life and death. Animals just south of the wall, particularly pronghorn, bighorn and cats, may have used the Tinajas Altas high tanks or Tule well which sit just a few miles north of the border. But with a 15 foot barrier blocking their movements, they will have to seek out water elsewhere—and in the desert, a search for water can just as easily end in death as in a life-saving drink.
The wall that we found, steel uprights connected by steel mesh, caught us all by surprise. Some segments of it, constructed between the slopes of the craggy mountains, were only about 50 feet long before they ended at the base of hillsides. A ten second walk would take anyone who cared to, easily to the other side. I sat at the edge of one segment, peering into Mexico, scratching my head. We spent millions of dollars on this. Vehicles could not travel this rough terrain regardless of barrier, and a person could easily walk around it, but in most places it creates a significant barrier to many wildlife species, beyond being a simple drain on taxpayer dollars.
As we hiked away from the wall, I thought about the morning in Tinajas Altas Pass, and the battle scene etched in the sand. Here at the wall was the imprint of another battle, but the print of it will not wash away in the next rain or heavy wind. It's a scar that will remain after those involved have long since died. Eventually our war of attrition in the borderlands will end, and maybe someday we'll realize it didn't need to be a war at all. But the victims out here in the Barry Goldwater Range and other natural places in this vast stretch of ecoregions that we share with Mexico will still be blocked by the steel scar we have left them.
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