Locals say the trees have served as a community gathering place for generations and are ecologically rare. Border Patrol officials said they had to be removed for the border wall.
Big Bend’s rare Rio Grande border crossing remains open
A rare Rio Grande border crossing in Big Bend lets tourists walk or boat into Mexico as border wall plans retreat.
A group of trees believed to be over 100 years old was felled on July 27 at the U.S.-Mexico border to make way for President Donald Trump’s border wall, local activists said.
The three cottonwood trees have stood at the border between the countries in Lochiel, Arizona, for over a century, said Erick Meza, a border program coordinator in the state for the Sierra Club. The massive trees have long served as a home for rare species and as a shady place for neighbors to gather.
According to Meza, the trees were torn down over local objections, without environmental monitors and despite legally protected bird species nesting in the trees.
“This is a very unique situation because there is no other place in the entire border,” Meza told USA TODAY. “The trees were so big that their branches were reaching into Mexico, and branches from the trees in Mexico were reaching into the United States, creating a connected ecosystem.”
Department of Homeland Security officials did not respond to USA TODAY requests for comment. But in a June letter to Meza that he shared with USA TODAY, a border patrol official wrote that the trees would be removed because they cannot be relocated.
The fight over the cottonwoods in Arizona is the latest in the pushback Trump’s wall faces from border communities and environmentalists. The administration’s move to build a barrier through some of the country’s most remote yet ecologically unique places has sparked outrage even in deeply Republican Texas.
At least one person was arrested in connection with protests over the destruction of the cottonwoods in Arizona, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office said. The person is charged with trespassing.
Sierra Club officials shared photos of bulldozers taking down the massive trees near the border which can grow to be 100 feet tall and nearly 50 feet wide.
A fourth cottonwood remains standing at the site surrounded by people protesting its destruction, Meza said.
The Sierra Club is an environmental organization that was originally formed by early American naturalist John Muir around the turn of the century. It has grown since then to become the perhaps the nation’s preeminent conservationist organization, from fighting to keep the Grand Canyon from being flooded in the 1960s to protesting outside President Barack Obama’s White House in 2011 to prevent the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Why did DHS bulldoze the trees?
The trees were felled because they “cannot be relocated,” Michelle “Shelly” Barnes, an official with U.S. Border Patrol, wrote in a June letter to Meza.
USA TODAY has reached out to Border Patrol for comment on the letter which states that the trees “fall within the Roosevelt Reservation and will be removed in order to construct the border barrier.”
The Roosevelt Reservation is a 60-foot-wide stretch of land along parts of the border that the federal government established in the early 1900s in an effort to combat smuggling.
Locals opposed to DHS’s planned destruction of the cottonwoods say the cluster of massive trees has served as a place for the neighbors to gather for generations.
“It’s kind of the heart of that little valley,” Lochiel resident Laurie Butler told local news outlet AZPM in June when it became clear the cottonwoods were in DHS’ border wall path.
Rare ecosystem in the balance
The cottonwoods sit at the heart of an ecosystem that is home to jaguars, rare species of birds and other wildlife.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife lists the area as among the only jaguar ranges in the country. Other animals in the area include antelope, cougar, and “many birds unique to the prairie,” Arizona state park authorities said.
Among the rare birds is Cassin’s kingbird, a species that local activists said was nesting in the trees at the time of their destruction. The tyrant flycatcher bird is protected under federal law though it is not endangered.
Destruction of the cottonwood apparently housing the federally protected bird comes after Border Patrol made assurances in their letter that the agency would “establish a buffer zone around active nests.”