In Push to Secure Border, Risk to Rare Species Seen

Smuggler Gulch once symbolized the struggle for control over the U.S.-Mexico border, a shrubby trough so often traversed by undocumented immigrants that erstwhile Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan used it as the backdrop for his hard-line appeal for stricter border enforcement.

A steel fence and more border agents mean few migrants now cross into the United States here. But these days the dusty canyon is the site of a different sort of battle--this one surrounding the potential impact of expanded border enforcement on endangered plants and birds that inhabit the frontier between the San Ysidro crossing and the Pacific Ocean.

Environmentalists on both sides of the border are protesting U.S. plans for the most elaborate barrier in California to date. A gleaming 16-foot-high fence would be erected, parallel to the first, along with a patrol roadway that would require earthmoving on amammoth scale.

The emerging tug of war is the most immediate of a growing list of environmental skirmishes nationwide stemming from the federal government’s efforts to fight illegal immigration and drug smuggling by strengthening barriers along the nation’s southern border. Conservationists and some wildlife officials complain that the flurry of border construction, begun in earnest in the early 1990s, has come at the cost of adequate review and could further threaten sensitive wildlife areas as enforcement efforts edge outside urbanized centers into natural habitats.

Such concerns have cropped up from California east to Arizona, where environmentalists fear demise of the rare Sonoran pronghorn antelope, and on to Texas, where a Laredo group sued to block a road project it said might endanger a possible ocelot habitat.

“Understandably we want to shore up our borders,” said Bill Snape, legal director at the Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife. “On the other hand, species like the pronghorn and rare cats don’t really care much for human, somewhat arbitrary, boundaries. We haven’t really come to grips with that.”

In San Diego, environmentalists have organized meetings and confronted U.S. officials at the border since learning recently of the proposed construction at Smuggler Gulch near the sensitive Tijuana River estuary, one of the largest in Southern California. The surrounding mesas, gulches and marshes include dozens of unique and fragile species, from the California gnatcatcher and California least tern to at least two plants believed to grow in no other spot in the United States.

More Reviews Needed, Critics Say

Federal construction officials say final plans for the gulch, also commonly called Smugglers Canyon, are far from set. They contend that the project, on which they hope to move forward next year, would benefit the environment by preventing illegal crossers from further trampling fragile terrain and insist any construction will comply with federal rules on endangered species.

Skeptics include some officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who say some earlier projects in the San Diego area were erected without sufficient review of overall environmental impact.

Such issues are likely to grow more urgent as elements of the Operation Gatekeeper crackdown along the San Diego border, including new fencing and lights, are replicated in other zones. The Border Patrol is drawing up plans to guide construction along the southwest border for the next five years--and to detail how it will protect nature.

The debate highlights an aspect of the border area often lost in the hubbub over immigration policy: accidents of climate and varied terrains left largely free of development have together created a unique 2,000-mile ribbon brimming with unusual plants and animals.

“There is no area in the United States that has a higher diversity of species,” said borderlands biology expert Frederick R. Gehlbach of Baylor University.

New fences and roads, plus lighting, ground sensors and other technology, have been key building blocks of enforcement in places such as San Diego, El Paso and, most recently, the Imperial Valley and Brownsville, Texas. Steel landing-mat fences prevent smugglers from driving through areas where barriers were in disrepair or nonexistent. Roads have made it easier for beefed-up contingents of agents to discourage would-be crossers, officials say.

The result of this multi-pronged enforcement effort in San Diego has been a dramatic reduction in arrests in the last five years.

The arrests, numbering 283,000 in San Diego last year, are easier to tally than the sum of building across the entire border because the projects have been handled by a variety of agencies.

Most border construction has been done under Joint Task Force-Six, a Texas-based military command that helps enforcement agencies curb drug smuggling on the southern border. Uniformed units grade roads, erect fencing and clear helicopter landing pads, mainly for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Since 1994, JTF-6 has built or repaired some 340 miles of border roads and put up 35 miles of fencing from Texas to California. Next year’s yet unfunded plans include another 300 miles of road work.

These figures do not include the planned $12 million San Diego project, which calls for National Guard units to finish a backup fence stretching 14 miles and build a parallel, unpaved road so border agents can patrol the steep terrain during all types of weather.

The road and backup fence, a curved steel barrier dimpled like a cheese grater, are already taking shape along the fields near the Otay Mesa port of entry east of San Diego. Fence boosters, most prominently U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), say the new layer will block crossers who overcome the existing 10-foot fence.

The project has prompted exaggerated reports in the Mexican press of an “anti-immigrant superhighway” and spurred environmentalists to rush to the defense of a scrubby border strip a casual observer might consider anything but pristine.

But appearances deceive. Conservationists say the canyons and mesas hugging the border house a surprising number of rare plants and birds that would be menaced by the earthmoving needed to fill the canyon for a level road.

Early plans call for workers to carve dirt from a neighboring mesa and create an earthen platform across the gulch 500 feet wide or more at its base.

Opponents fear resulting erosion will harm the nearby Tijuana River estuary, home to eight birds on the federal endangered species list.

Smuggler Gulch a Unique Ecosystem

The slopes between Smuggler Gulch and the ocean a few miles west are believed to be the nation’s only home for two fragile plants, Orcutt’s dudleya and Baja California birdbush. Some say the area may also contain plants that attract the endangered Quino checkerspot butterfly.

Land included in the project recently was set aside to protect rare wildlife under a nationally hailed conservation program. The beachside Border Field State Park also stands in the way of the proposed fence.

“You could eliminate species from the United States,” warned Cindy Burrascano, who heads the San Diego chapter of the California Native Plant Society.

Mexican activists fear the earth work could also aggravate Tijuana’s chronic winter flooding by damming runoff. And they question the need for new fences when Operation Gatekeeper is said to have restored order to the border.

U.S. authorities reply that the road would make it safer to patrol the zone for border crossers and drug smugglers and do so with fewer agents if budget cuts ever prompt a force reduction in San Diego. The secondary fence and road were written into the 1996 immigration law.

“We’ve said that drugs are a clear and present danger, and this is a tool in that,” said Gary Becks, a Hunter aide monitoring the project.

Border Patrol commanders insist the project is still in “concept” form and, acknowledging the area is environmentally tender, vow to work with activists and wildlife officials to avoid a showdown. Patrol officials have met with activists at the proposed construction site and at subsequent forums.

“We’ve done a lot of construction already,” said San Diego sector chief William Veal. “And we’ve done a lot of mitigation that benefited these areas.”

Some environmentalists acknowledge that the reduced number of border crossers due to heightened enforcement has meant less trampling in the fragile area around the Tijuana River estuary. The Border Patrol also contends that a fence road would allow it to discontinue using the spider’s web of truck trails now crisscrossing the canyons and hills.

More meetings between officials and community members are planned. But skeptics say sections already underway in San Diego were approved with little public notice and reveal a piecemeal approach to border construction.

Border Projects on Fast Track

Although environmentalists have taken aim at border projects in recent years, some of the most persistent criticism has come from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which looks out for endangered species. The agency has complained repeatedly about what it terms incomplete review.

Some environmentalists and wildlife officials say government planners have designed border projects in isolation from each other. The result, critics say, is to skirt the spirit of federal environmental laws and make it nearly impossible to determine what is being built where. Wildlife officials also complain that their concerns have not been fully addressed.

In San Diego, for example, wildlife officials were asked this spring to evaluate a 1.6-mile section of road and fence construction east of the San Ysidro crossing. They fired off a strongly critical letter, only to discover later that the INS had already declared the project had no significant environmental impact.

Debates along the border have caught the attention of Fish and Wildlife higher-ups in Washington who recently began studying if fence-builders are following the required public review process.

Federal agencies are required to study projects for overall environmental impact. Those deemed not to have major impact can be approved without full analysis. All the border projects since 1994 have fallen into the fast-track category, often free of public hearings, but open to written comments.

Yet unused is a 1996 law allowing environmental protection waivers for border projects by the U.S. attorney general.

Officials at the Fort Worth-based Army Corps of Engineers, the architects working alongside JTF-6 on border construction, insist they are following the rules.

They note that fewer fences and roads have been built than were provided for in a 1994 report addressing the impact of projects from Texas west. Planners are working on a new report, and a master plan of projects completed and contemplated, to guide building after next year.

“We are extremely proud of our efforts to minimize the affect [sic] of JTF-6 operations on the environment,” a JTF-6 spokesman said in a written statement.

Some of the sharpest exchanges have occurred in Arizona, where JTF-6 projects have brought fences, lights and 100 miles in new or redrawn border road since 1993. Wildlife officials expressed dismay with what they termed the military’s “disregard” for environmental considerations and once threatened to halt a road repair due to an endangered plant.

“JTF-6 wasn’t a good experience for us,” recalled Fish and Wildlife official Don Metz.

Law enforcement officers say the work has helped battle undocumented immigrants and smugglers who backpack drugs through remote areas, causing their own environmental havoc.

Rare Antelope’s Only Habitat

Most recently, environmental concerns center east of Yuma in the vast desert that includes the nation’s only habitat for the Sonoran pronghorn antelope. Conservationists fear the rare antelope is caught in a deadly squeeze as border agents patrol a wilderness used by a growing number of undocumented immigrants.

Prodded by activists and federal wildlife officials, the Border Patrol is now studying the effects of its low-flying helicopters and use of dirt roads on the remaining 125 to 250 antelope.

The Border Patrol, which also has been directed to study the effects of its actions on the endangered lesser long-nosed bat and pygmy owl, considers the desert patrols crucial to prevent human tragedy in desolate terrain that can be brutally hot.

Environmental arguments also are emerging as a weapon in wider debates over border enforcement.

A Laredo, Texas, group this year filed what is believed to be the first lawsuit seeking to halt border construction--mainly road building and repair in two counties--on grounds it would violate federal environmental protection laws.

The Rio Grande International Study Center charged that the U.S. environmental review in preparation for the road work and construction of 10 helipads was inadequate. The group contended some of the affected area might be a habitat for endangered ocelots and other species.

The lawsuit also targeted what opponents viewed as a growing military presence on the border.

Environmental law is “one of the few avenues that you have” to challenge such policies, said Cynthia Cano, a lawyer with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in San Antonio who has worked on the case.

But, in denying a preliminary injunction, a judge ruled that planners had sufficiently weighed possible environmental damage.

Moreover, U.S. District Judge George Kazen ruled, “The project unquestionably serves an important public policy. The executive and legislative branches of the government have placed a high priority on efforts to interdict the movement of illegal narcotics and undocumented aliens.”

The work was completed in April, but the court fight endures. Opponents say military builders reneged on promised environmental safeguards.

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Tension in the Borderlands

Work is underway for a second fence and patrol road in the areanear San Diego as part of a 14-mile project along the western U.S.-Mexico border. Concerns are growing over how patrol fences, roads and lights used to control immigration affect fragile wildlife in the four-state border region.

Double Fence in Spring Canyon Area

Existing primary fence

Secondary fence

Some areas will be graded or filled in to make them less steep to ease patrolling

Width between fences will vary from 100 to 300 feet along the route

Security barrier around entry and exit gates in secondary fence

SPECIES AT RISK:

San Diego: California gnatcatcher, least tern, Orcutt’s dudleya and Baja California birdbush

* Cabeza Prieta Refuge: Sonoran pronghorn antelope, lesser long-nosed bat, pygmy owl

* O’Odhan Nation: Tumamoc globeberry plant

* Laredo: Ocelots

* Brownsville area: Jaguarundi, ocelots, dozens of rare birds and plants

Sources: INS, Border Patrol, Fish and Wildlife; Peter Steinhart, “Two Eagles,” University of California Press