The desert borderlands between the United States and Mexico are home to one of the largest and most biodiverse ecosystems in North America. The habitats here are critical for an array of rare, threatened, and endangered species including jaguar, Sonoran pronghorn, lesser long-nosed bat, and more. But human activity in the area is devouring more and more land through farming, urban sprawl, and data centers. Recently, the expansion of a physical United States-Mexico border wall and all the infrastructure required to support it has caused particular disruption and damage to the borderlands ecosystem and the wildlife that call it home.

Border walls are located along imaginary geopolitical boundaries. They slice arbitrarily through critical ecosystems that know only natural boundaries, cutting wild animals off from the resources they need to live—food, water, a diverse selection of mates—and the ability to migrate for survival.

As of 2022, there were 74 border walls around the world. According to WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America), a research and advocacy organization for human rights in the Americas, “three miles of new border wall are now being built every week.” These walls reflect the immigration policies of human governments on either side and are often dangerous zones for people living around them and attempting to cross. But border walls threaten other life as well.

It’s Not Just the Border Walls

The kind of disruption a border wall presents to wildlife would be problematic under any circumstance, but climate change has exacerbated the issue. In a warming world, wild animals must move beyond their typical ranges or leave their natural habitat entirely to access cooler climates in more northern latitudes.

In the United States, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is, according to its website, currently “utilizing funds from the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1)’ to construct a border barrier system, or a ‘Smart Wall’, which includes a combination of primary and secondary steel bollard wall, waterborne barriers, patrol roads, and the technology required to tie it all together, such as cameras, lights and other detection technology.”

Read the full article about border walls increasingly harming wildlife by Cinnamon Janzer at Nonprofit Quarterly.