is co-authors in 2011. They estimated that 134 mammal, 178 reptile, and 57 amphibian species live within about 30 miles of the line. Of those, 50 species and three subspecies are globally or federally threatened in Mexico or the United States. And they survive only because people on both sides have worked hard to conserve them.
With Thursday’s announcement of the waivers in the Federal Register — a move environmental groups like Defenders of Wildlife and Sierra Club plan to challenge in court — DHS is signaling is plans to move quickly to begin construction on the first 17 miles of new wall in Texas.
For humans who enjoy the protected areas and the local plant and animal species dependent on this ecosystem, it’s bad news. “[They] would lose some of their last remaining US habitat,” as the Texas biologists wrote in Frontiers in Ecology and Environment.