Posted on 01/31/2019 1:57:23 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
The $300 million-a-year ecotourism industry in South Texas -- a top birding destination -- is bracing for the arrival of border wall construction crews in mid-February.
The workers are set to begin bulldozing a swath of land 150 feet wide to construct 33 miles of wall near the Mexico border in Texas' Hidalgo and Starr counties. The work was funded last year to supplement the existing 22 miles of wall in Hidalgo County.
Ecotourism thrives in South Texas because of a unique subtropical ecosystem called the Tamaulipan thornscrub forest, and the wall construction poses a significant threat, environmentalists say.
"It is the most diverse habitat in the entire country," said Tiffany Kersten, a biologist and a board member of Friends of the Wildlife Corridor.
The organization opposes the wall's construction as a threat to the group's mission of supporting the national wildlife refuges and their "protection of native and migratory wildlife species that depend on the native habitat."
This threatened habitat sustains more than 1,100 plant species and 700 vertebrate species.
Along with the national wildlife refuges, the region is home to the National Butterfly Center and several state and county parks, all of which bring in tourists.
Aislynn Maestas, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency will work with Customs and Border Protection to minimize the impact to natural resources.
To build this section of the border wall, the U.S. government has suspended 28 environmental protection laws, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, using an obscure section of the Real ID Act of 2005, which allows the homeland security secretary to suspend any law to facilitate building border barriers.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
The $300 million-a-year ecotourism industry in South Texas — a top birding destination — is bracing for the arrival of border wall construction crews in mid-February.
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Yeah. Because billions of people love to go down there and avoid the rapists and drug smugglers to watch birds.
But rape trees, and cartel members all over the place, and your pickup truck getting broken into if you leave it unattended doesn’t discourage tourists at all, right?
Tough toenails for nature tourism. Protecting the country is more important.
Sameo Sameo here in southern Az.
Too damn bad. Build the wall.
Spending a week in South Texas looking at Birds, and I’m being very generous, let’s say a person spends $2,000. You mean to tell me there’s a hundred and fifty thousand birdwatchers who go to the border and South Texas? Furthermore, last I checked birds will be able to fly higher than 20 ft. Hell if history is any example, the birds will probably be sitting on top of the wall
One of the benefits of doing a lot of recreational drugs is you can easily make up wild stories like this. A lot of clowns doing “nature tourism” in South Texas have either been kidnapped or are dead. This is a crock.
The environment is the same on the other side of the border. Let the ecoweenies go down there to worship Gaii.
Uh Huh...Diversity.
How does a 30’ wall stop birds from migrating?
How much are these people charging people who go there and how many people DO go there to look at birds?
“Nature tourism” - Big whoop! National Security before miniscule hobbies.
After construction you will only be bitten by 5,000 species of nasty bugs, not 6,000. It's a huge loss, I tell you.
They are really grasping at straws now.
....all of a sudden
-PJ
Another my dog at my homework so we can’t build a wall story.
Birds fly high stooge.
“Along with the national wildlife refuges, the region is home to the National Butterfly Center and several state and county parks, all of which bring in tourists.”
No way will butterflies be able to get over the wall./sarc
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