Dynamite Blasts and Paradise Lost

[douglas9]

In mid-August, during what should have been the peak of the summer monsoon season, we were experiencing what southern Arizonans despairingly call a “non-soon.” The normally lush green grasslands of the San Rafael Valley were brown, crisp, and dry. Red dirt roads were swept up into the sky by dust devils dancing across the valley floor, their funnels twisting high into the air.

Wells were drying up on ranches, and 18-wheeler trucks were being loaded with cattle because they could no longer be sustained after years of drought. Scores of dead alligator juniper trees lined the foothills of the valley.

Amid these ominous signs of drought, I spotted something much more sinister: wooden survey stakes lining the Roosevelt Reservation, the 60-foot-wide, 632-mile-long strip of land along the U.S.-Mexico border set aside by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 for federal access. This easement, established by the “father of American conservation,” has ironically enabled the rapid expansion of border walls.

When I saw the stakes, they elicited a feeling similar to witnessing a loved one at the end of life—a sense of stinging inevitability. The words “DO NOT DISTURB” were written on the stakes.

https://www.theborderchronicle.com/p/dynamite-blasts-and-paradise-lost?publication_id=373432&post_id=181729092&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=5f9foq&triedRedirect=true

[dweller]

1. Aren't these protected lands?

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Sort of. Congress inserted a provision into the Real ID Act of 2005 granting the secretary of Homeland Security—a nonelected, politically appointed official—the authority to waive virtually all laws for border wall construction. These include the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the National Scenic Trails Act. The waiver directly affects the Coronado National Memorial. At Border Monument 102, located at the southern foot of the Huachuca Mountains within the memorial, the Arizona National Scenic Trail reaches its southern terminus. But the trail is now truncated, and thousands of hikers who once celebrated their 800-mile overland journey from the Utah border to the U.S.-Mexico border are now unable to reach their final step. Monument 102 was recently wrapped in concertina (razor) wire, and public access is restricted. The razor wire poses a lethal threat to wildlife. We are ceding public lands in the name of border insecurity.

snip

Good read , thanks




✌🏻

[jfz9580m]

2. Each such attack should be individually challenged

I wish I could do the same locally, but again, like many of my atomized generation, I have no idea what to do hyperlocally.
I am totally okay with the label NIMBY any which way, wherever I am.