Wetlands to create anti-immigrant ‘moat’
Law enforcement officials and environmentalists are joining forces on the USA–Mexico border to restore a wetland area in the hope that it will lure back wildlife and cut border crime.
The 178-hectare Hunters Hole area on the outskirts of Yuma, southwest Arizona, was once a wildlife-rich wetland fed by the Colorado River, but has recently dried up and become a scrubland. The subsequent invasion of non-native plant species such as tamarisk now provides dense cover for ‘illegal immigrants and the bandits who prey on them’, said Javier Tarin of US Customs and Border Protection.
Yuma city officials have devised a plan to create a levee at one end with increased border surveillance, dig a deeper water channel and revive a 3.2-kilometre stretch of the Colorado River, and replace the invasive plant species with native species. Once this has been achieved, the wetlands will also serve as a barrier or ‘security channel’ between Yuma and the border with Mexico that has been likened to the defensive moats that were dug around castles in the past.
‘The moats that I’ve seen circled the castle and allowed you to protect yourself and that’s kind of what we’re looking at here,’ Yuma county sheriff Ralph Ogden told the Associated Press.
But coordinator Charles Flynn, director of Yuma Crossing National Heritage, who has recently restored a nearby wetland, said, ‘It isn’t really a moat’, and will ‘complement the border patrol’s efforts, not replace them’.
The restoration plan has won support from environmentalists and landowners, who have opposed previous security plans such as fences, which break up wildlife corridors.
June 2008
The 178-hectare Hunters Hole area on the outskirts of Yuma, southwest Arizona, was once a wildlife-rich wetland fed by the Colorado River, but has recently dried up and become a scrubland. The subsequent invasion of non-native plant species such as tamarisk now provides dense cover for ‘illegal immigrants and the bandits who prey on them’, said Javier Tarin of US Customs and Border Protection.
Yuma city officials have devised a plan to create a levee at one end with increased border surveillance, dig a deeper water channel and revive a 3.2-kilometre stretch of the Colorado River, and replace the invasive plant species with native species. Once this has been achieved, the wetlands will also serve as a barrier or ‘security channel’ between Yuma and the border with Mexico that has been likened to the defensive moats that were dug around castles in the past.
‘The moats that I’ve seen circled the castle and allowed you to protect yourself and that’s kind of what we’re looking at here,’ Yuma county sheriff Ralph Ogden told the Associated Press.
But coordinator Charles Flynn, director of Yuma Crossing National Heritage, who has recently restored a nearby wetland, said, ‘It isn’t really a moat’, and will ‘complement the border patrol’s efforts, not replace them’.
The restoration plan has won support from environmentalists and landowners, who have opposed previous security plans such as fences, which break up wildlife corridors.
June 2008
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