The ebb and flow of people and wildlife across the border in the San Rafael Valley has long been a function of need.
For humans on both sides of the border, the crossing enabled connection between family and friends. The ties were deep and multi-layered.
Emma Matus-Voss worked at the U.S. Customs House in Lochiel when it closed in 1983. Matus-Voss, who now lives in Corona de Tucson, recalls that the produce growing on the Sonoran side was highly prized.
“You would buy bushels of green corn to make tamales,” Matus-Voss said. And the apples, which had to be parboiled to make them acceptable for import, went into empanadas and pies on both sides of the border.
For wildlife, the need to travel freely through the San Rafael Valley was and still is about survival. The area has been identified by the Arizona Game and Fish Department as the most important wildlife corridor for the movement of jaguar, black bear, mule deer and mountain lions in the state. Those animals are among many threatened by the construction of a 30-foot steel bollard wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Rare fauna — the desert marigold, Sonoran Desert tortoise plant, Chiricahua Mountain sage and Pima pineapple cactus — also could be impacted as heavy equipment barrels through the Valley to widen an easement and construct a wall.
Crews from Fisher Sand and Gravel, the North Dakota-based company that was awarded a $309 million contract by the Trump administration to build a 27-mile stretch of wall in the Santa Cruz County, arrived in the Lochiel area last week and began widening the easement and tearing down the existing barriers at the border. Word began spreading that the construction would result in the removal of historic 200-year-old cottonwood trees to make room for the new wall, mobilizing activists concerned about the consequences on the area’s ecosystem.
Today, the easement along the border at Lochiel/La Noria is strewn with downed paradise trees and underbrush. Turned earth lines the roadway. Gnarled metal, remnants of the Normandy wall installed around 2008, has been piled in a huge heap.
Kate Scott is co-founder of the nonprofit Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center, located in the Huachuca Mountains. The center focuses on coexistence between wildlife and people and the protection of vital regional ecosystems. She was present as heavy equipment moved through the Lochiel border area. And she brought with her trappings of Native American cultures, people, she says, who find the ecosystem severance particularly disruptive. Yaqui dancers have also visited the site to perform sacred rituals.
On this day, she wraps a cloth prayer chain around a cottonwood scheduled for felling. The chain contains the prayers of Austin Nunez, chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, as well as other tribal elders. Another prayer comes from Adelita Grijalva, U.S. Representative for Arizona 7th District.
Back in the day, Matus-Voss worked to enforce 42 laws dealing with agriculture, customs and tariffs at the Lochiel customs house, which was shut down during the Reagan administration in the 1980s. Workers acted as immigration officers, checking border-crossing cards, good for distances of 25-miles into the U.S. They also monitored six-month permits that were good for longer stays and great movement within this county.
Today, back-and-forth traffic between Santa Cruz County and Santa Cruz, Sonora, goes through Nogales. What had been a six-to-eight-mile trip taking 10 minutes for border residents now requires a commitment of 2½ hours over 65 miles. The fate of the customs house, now serving as a base for the activists, is unknown.
The area’s wildlife, on the other hand, have no port-of-entry and no choice as they struggle with habitat and water availability. The wall’s impact on their mobility is a major concern, as are the ripple effects of the project.
“In our region the greatest threats are threats to water. That affects everyone, not just the native species but humans as well,” said Dr. Ron Pulliam of Patagonia, founder of Borderlands Restoration Network and Wildlife Corridors LLC. “Those who look at the removal of Fremont cottonwoods in Lochiel as inconsequential do not realize how it affects them, those small changes over time.”
Pulliam is a Regents Professor Emeritus at the Eugene P. Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia. Among other distinctions, he has served as a Science Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.
“There are much more effective ways of securing the border,” Pulliam said. “If you really want to protect the border, you do it with high-tech surveillance and have people on the ground.”
Matus-Voss said the contrast between what is and what was is striking.
“I have photos of the area when it was doing good,” said Matus-Voss. “And I have photos of what it looks like now. It’s sad. And now the fence is being built.”
Inquiries to U.S. Customs and Border Protection regarding the border wall construction on local landowners, ranching operations, water use, area wildlife and fauna were not immediately returned.
As for Pulliam, he sees the building of a physical wall more political than successful.
“In the public’s mind, the wall is effective.” In truth, he said, “it is not.”
PRT Board member Elvia Gallaher contributed to this story.