Paul Ingram

BREAKING: We just obtained a slew of FOIA documents on Big Bend border wall construction contracts. These documents reveal previously undisclosed plans for nearly 70 miles of *secondary* border wall in the Big Bend region--not one, but TWO layers of wall. THREAD (1/4)

I'm sharing this text and photos from a facebook post by my old boss at Big Bend National Park, now-retired biologist Raymond Skiles: Customs and Border Protection plans to destroy west Texas’ and Big Bend National Park’s only beaver pond. According to the CBP "smart wall" map, they will bulldoze, then build a 100’-wide road and “patrol zone” through the only beaver dam, pond, and beaver lodge (beaver home) in west Texas. The beaver family and a host of pond-dependent species will be scraped and drained away as well. As a BBNP biologist for 30 years, and native west Texan, I and other Texas biologists know of no other like it in Texas west of the Pecos River area. That's over 30,000 square miles. The Rio Grande Village beaver pond (map) likely hosts the park’s largest number and type of wildlife at any single location. Adjacent to a campground, visitor access is easy. A pedestrian trail is dedicated to beaver pond treasures. The nature trail’s elevated boardwalk is the park’s most popular destination for bird watchers hoping to see ducks, herons, flycatchers, warblers, wrens and grebes. It is the park’s best place to see (and often hear) frogs and toads. Turtles, fish and even reptiles are abundant. Mammals, including javelina, foxes, bobcats, and coyotes cautiously approach under cover of pondside vegetation and crepuscular quiet. The pond is habitat for Big Bend sliders, an aquatic turtle on the Texas list of threatened species; and Big Bend mosquitofish - they live nowhere else in the wild. It’s not easy to be a beaver in the desert. Other beavers live in the Rio Grande, but the river is too large and flood-prone to dam, so they live along gentle stretches of river and burrow their homes into the steep, silty mud banks. The Rio Grande Village beaver pond is fed by a warm spring that emerges onto a broad, gentle slope well back from the river. That creates a small stream with just enough room for a beaver dam and pond before it spills into the river channel. There are other springs in the park and region, but they're in rock channels, or are subject to scouring floods, or sometimes dry out, or emerge too close to the river to allow space for a pond. At Rio Grande Village, the beaver have not had an easy time. Even the National Park Service once trapped and moved them, and I suspect killed a few, to prevent them from chewing on planted trees or flooding a few campsites. That came to an end in 1988, when park managers decided to give them some space; live-and let-live. That decision created the parks’ best wildlife habitat, and for decades the beaver pond has been among the park’s most important visitor experiences. The beaver will very soon face its most powerful and destructive threat ever. There are laws that say, “think about it, maybe this is too important to destroy, maybe there are alternatives, maybe use a nearby existing road that meets all the same border security goals.” But CBP chose to ignore (waive) all those. And ignore Americans who love nature and their parks. The bulldozers could arrive soon, even this week. In case you and your children never get to see Big Bend’s beaver pond, here are a few photos - in memorium.