Bert Gildart: Writer and Photographer

©Bert Gildart: For the past few days Donald Trump has been discussing “The Wall,” and he’s finding it may not be as easy to separate the U.S. from Mexico with a huge, huge barrier as he had promised.  Yes, some places may need a means of excluding Mexicans from entering the U.S. and that was certainly true in Arizona’s Organ Pipe National Monument. Here, parts of the terrain are ideally suited to stealth, and monitoring revealed that at the height close to 1,000 illegals were stealing across the 30-mile long border on a NIGHTLY basis.  Many were drug runners, and some threatened visitors, and sometimes tragedies occurred.  In 2002 Ranger Kris Eggle was killed by a drug runner.

Dozens of “People trails” were being established and the trampling from thousands of footfalls quickly eroded the critical habitat required for the endangered desert antelope.

Here’s the way a five-mile section of road in Organ Pipe appears.  Some of the fencing is obviously
cheap but one section, perhaps a mile long, was expensive and is used in other sections of the park.
As best I can determine, cost per mile is $2-3M. 
When used in conjunction with other forms of detection, it has worked.

You can’t have this type of impact on a park designated as an International Heritage Park so here, in this specific part of the U.S., a wall was needed.  Americans paid for it and the cost as best as I can determine for the high metal barrier section was $2-$3M PER MILE.

It is now safe again to hike remote sections of Organ Pipe, thanks in part to fencing.
It’s also made it safer for law enforcement rangers.

But the border fence didn’t completely solve the problem and to accomplish the goal of eliminating drug runners and, yes, sometimes undocumented aliens simply looking for work, officials had to do lots more, and here are a few of the extra measures that were required: They increased the border patrol from 50 to 500, installed huge monitors and night cameras, and periodically they make helicopter patrols. The combination has worked, and the park, which closed subsequent to the murder of Ranger Eggle, reopened two years ago.  Now there are fences separating the border but some are more effective than others.  The fences shown here separate a five mile segment of the U.S. from Mexico.

Building a wall worked in Organ Pipe and now the beauty of this incredible desert park
can be safely explored, here along the Ajo Mountain Loop Road.

Do we need a wall in other parts of the USA?  Do Americans need the kind of protection Organ Pipe required?

Those are questions I can’t answer, but if we do, I doubt seriously if DT will be able to live up to his campaign promise. What I can say and want to emphasize is that if we do need a wall, it’s not because I agree with “OUR PRESIDENT’S” hyperbole that [Mexicans are] “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists…”

But to give the devil his due he concluded by saying “…some are good people.”

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THIS TIME LAST YEAR:

Mountain Biking in Anza Borrego

 

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 28th, 2017 at 1:49 pm and is filed under National Lands, View Point. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.