Posted on 12/12/2018 10:07:41 AM PST by dennisw
President Trump is pushing for more money to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. The debate could come to a head as Congress nears a deadline to fund parts of the government. Some sections of the border already have a wall. And in many areas, building more wall means cutting through private property. In South Texas, NPR's Cristina Cala and Sam Gringlas visited a place where that conflict is already playing out.
SAM GRINGLAS, BYLINE: We're just looking at dozens and dozens of these red and black butterflies.
CHRISTINA CALA, BYLINE: Like a cloud of butterflies - just one right after the other.
GRINGLAS: The National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, hugs the banks of the Rio Grande River. It has a visitor center, hiking trails, gardens - all on 100 acres of land at the end of a long dirt road.
MARIANNA TREVINO-WRIGHT: These are queens. And this one right here is a soldier...
CALA: That's Marianna Trevino-Wright, executive director of the sanctuary. She says this part of the Rio Grande Valley has more butterfly species than anywhere in North America.
TREVINO-WRIGHT: Every day I come to work, it's like going on a safari.
GRINGLAS: Right before the midterm elections, the Trump administration announced it had awarded contracts to build six miles of border wall in Hidalgo County, Texas. It will be one of the first new stretches of wall built under President Trump. Trevino-Wright says the wall will be constructed up to a mile back from the river, basically cutting the butterfly sanctuary in half.
TREVINO-WRIGHT: So this is it.
GRINGLAS: So all this land in between here, the river and where we started out by the levee, that's going to maybe be closed off to you.
TREVINO-WRIGHT: It's going to be a no man's land. It's going to be border patrols' enforcement zone. They will clear everything. One agent told me, why would we leave even one bush for someone to hide under?
GRINGLAS: Customs and Border Protection denies that it plans to completely clear-cut the land. It also says that property owners who need access to the land between the river and the wall can have it.
CALA: The Butterfly Center doesn't have a lot of options to stop the law. The federal government can claim private lands for public use through a legal process called eminent domain. The government has used eminent domain many times before to build other stretches of the border while under previous administrations. Trevino-Wright gets that. But she was shocked when last year she found workmen wielding chainsaws, cutting down trees and mowing down brush to survey the land.
The butterflies can fly up over it.
Boo freeking hoo
um can’t they fly??
There is a song? :)
Can’t they just fly over the wall? It is not as though we are building an artificial mountain range. Also, why is it that anytime someone wants to build something, or mine for something, some endangered species is making its last stand right there?
It appears that this was not mother nature’s plan for the area. The organization planted species that would keep them happy. So I imagine they also imported the original butterflies. It was a field.
Can’t make this $h1t up !
The Center is 10 years old and was originally an onion field. Phony as a $3 bill. Move it...
Gee... butterflies or open borders that destroy our country.
Which one to choose?
BTW butterflies can fly OVER the wall and thru the slots in the wall.
Nuke the butterflies!
Somebody needs to tell these numbnuts that butterflys CAN FLY. The border wall and a bit of cleared space one each side of the wall will not deter them in the least.
TS
OMG...Butterflies before borders? Illegals before legals. Lawless before laws?
Somehow, I think that the butterflies will manage.
This is a glass half full/glass half empty kind of thing...depends on one's outlook.
What she says may be true, but it is also true that it's "basically making two butterfly sanctuaries instead of one."
They’re concerned about the very rare “butterwalk” species, that will be trapped.
There were unicorns once. Until someone built a wall...
Hey, that's super! Every day I go to work to support illegal aliens leaches that are stealing from my Family and that of every other tax payer.
Poor butterflies, they can no longer climb the wall
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