![]() 15, 2014 when the entire park was reopened again. 9, 2002 in a shootout with drug runners, prompted the closure of most of the park. The death of Park Ranger Kris Eggle on Aug. All of that changed in the late ’90s, however, when smuggling and drug cartels made the monument’s 517 square miles a dangerous place to visit. Visitation numbers each year were impressive for such a remote park. Roosevelt, the national monument was known as one of the prettiest parks with some of the most spectacular nature drives in the United States. After its creation in 1937 by President Franklin D. “Congress has to step in and stop this.Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument has a checkered history. “ Pumping water out of the desert at Organ Pipe Cactus national monument, on federally protected land, to support this project is a crime against the American spirit and will do lasting damage to a national treasure,” the Arizona congressman Raúl Grijalva said in an email to the Guardian. “It won’t take much to dry them,” said Dahl, standing amid the willows and cottonwoods that surround the spring-fed pond and provide some of the only shade in an otherwise treeless landscape. ![]() This oasis on the border, one of the oldest inhabited places in North America, is home to the only US populations of the endangered Quitobaquito pupfish and Sonoyta turtle. The impact could be most grievous at the cherished Quitobaquito Springs. There are also plans to pump water from underground aquifers to make concrete. The slotted barriers have frequently trapped debris during rainstorms, including in Organ Pipe in 20, turning the “so-called porous walls a solid dam”, said Millis. ![]() “They haven’t thought the design through,” said Dan Millis, the Borderlands Campaign coordinator for the Sierra Club. There are fears it will impede migration, cut animals off from water supplies and increase flooding. The new construction will replace pedestrian fences and vehicle barriers, which can easily be traversed by animals, with a 30ft tall bollard wall and accompanying infrastructure. In the decades since, Dahl has witnessed a dramatic increase in border militarization and barrier construction, including miles of fencing, access roads and a surge of border patrol agents. “National Park rangers would walk across the border and eat lunch,” said Dahl, motioning to a roadside restaurant in Mexico clearly visible behind the vehicle barriers, reminiscent of the Normandy beaches on D-day, that make up a section of the border.ĭonald Trump’s border wall will traverse the entirety of the southern edge of the monument in Arizona. At that time the border between the US and Mexico was easily and frequently crossed. Much has changed since the 1970s, when Dahl first visited Organ Pipe as a high school ecology student. “This unneeded, expensive blight will use precious water for its construction, cut off wildlife species from their habitat and its all-night lights will destroy the clear night skies,” said Kevin Dahl of the National Parks Conservation Association. It is also a deeply significant area for the nearby Tohono O’odham nation which has long opposed Trump’s border wall on their ancestral lands. Organ Pipe, located south-west of Tucson, Arizona, is a 330,000 acre wilderness home to mountain lions, javelinas, the endangered pronghorn and “more bird species than can be listed”, according to the National Park Service website. “Walling off these precious places would be a colossal mistake and a national tragedy.” “What is being proposed is bulldozing one of the most biologically diverse regions of the entire United States,” said Amanda Munro of the Southwest Environmental Center. Photograph: Center for Biological Diversity Border wall construction at the Organ Pipe Cactus national monument.
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