{"articles":[{"reaction_config":[{"text":"Yes","color":"#624960","stance":"yes"},{"text":"Maybe","color":"#edb723","stance":"maybe"},{"text":"No","color":"#4ac6ec","stance":"no"}],"id":17350,"title":"Do You Support Bulldozing a Butterfly Sanctuary to Build Trump’s Border Wall?","html_content":"\n

by Causes | 12.13.18

What’s the story?

President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico will require the partial bulldozing of a butterfly sanctuary near the Rio Grande River in Mission, Texas.

Last week, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that will allow the Trump administration to waive 28 federal laws – including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Art Act – to begin construction on 33 new miles of border wall.

What are both sides saying?

Marianna Treviño-Wright, director of the National Butterfly Center, told the San Antonio Express-News that bulldozers could start plowing through the preserve as soon as February 2019.

“Just like farmers get crop yield in acres and inches, we get butterflies based on what we have planted in acres and inches,” Treviño-Wright said. “So having a wide swath of our property bulldozed is going to negatively impact the volume of the species and diversity of the species.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in October that the flow of unauthorized immigrants and drugs along the border confirmed “an acute and immediate need” for a wall.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) posted on their website that they’re “committed to environmental and cultural stewardship while performing our core missions of border security.”
However, the Washington Post reported earlier this week that some of the recommendations from federal scientists were stripped from a key letter sent to the CBP:

Federal government scientists raised red flags last year about President Trump’s proposed wall for the U.S.-Mexico border, suggesting that it could harm the habitats of imperiled species living in the ecologically diverse region. Constructing a physical barrier in southern Texas, some said, should be avoided if possible.

But a number of those concerns did not make it to border officials considering the wall’s construction.

Interior Department officials stripped from a key letter to U.S. Customs and Border Protection a number of warnings by career biologists and wildlife managers about the potential impacts of the border wall on the area’s rare cats and other animals, according to new documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

What do you think?

Should a butterfly sanctuary be bulldozed for Trump’s border wall? Does border security preempt environmental concerns? Take action above, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Courtesy The National Butterfly Center)

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