La Migra, El Muro, and the Supreme Court

There has been a lot of buzz on the border lately, and I don't mean the helicopters that have to chase people through the desert. (Hey, Chertoff, I thought the wall was going to stop that? What happened?) I'm sitting fifty yards from a border surveillance tower this week at an undisclosed to everyone-except-the-US-Government location, trying to figure out what happened to our country. Bear with me as I make my way to the wildlife news.

I'll get there, but I wanted folks in other parts of the country to know that the wall hasn't actually slowed immigration down here in southern Arizona. Migrants are still pouring across the border. Semana Santa might be slowing things down a little bit, but they are still coming in droves. Ladders, baby. Desperation, poverty, hope, and $4000 is still bringing people to la frontera. We're going to have to give them something farther back.

Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife upped the ante with an petition to the Supreme Court to hear their pleas that the REAL ID waivers are unconstitutional. I think they are onto something, and I wish them well. The REAL ID waivers have wrought a lot of damage here in southern Arizona, and the pain of the wall at the San Pedro River is keenly felt.

Texas, on the other hand, is still suffering from anxiety of what's to come. Read this.

And speaking of REAL ID waivers, San Diego has a plan to protect wildlife corridors in southern California.

More than five years in the making, the South Coast Missing Linkages Project assembled by a partnership of government and private conservation agencies, aims to protect 69 travel routes for animals in an area that stretches from Santa Barbara County to south of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ever the naysayer, I'm wondering if they've actually seen the border south of San Diego anytime lately?

“For wildlife to survive, you need linkages, because the protected areas aren't big enough,” said Ray Sauvajot, chief of planning, science and resource management for the National Park Service.

Basically, we'll be needing the entire North American continent back.