The New Mexico Wildlife Federation stands firm in its continuing opposition to President Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the Mexican border.
The federation is working to raise public awareness that building a wall would harm wildlife. As part of that effort, the federation is releasing a video produced by Dave Cox of Mountain Media in Santa Fe. Click here to watch the video: https://youtu.be/raV95RSfs30
Cox traveled to the Bootheel in southeastern New Mexico in February to see conditions on the border. He interviewed the following NMWF staffers:
_ Ray Trejo, Southern New Mexico Outreach Coordinator for the NMWF. A resident of Deming, he’s hunted and fished extensively in New Mexico’s Bootheel Country and intimately knows the wildlife and the terrain.
_ Kamilia Elsisie, education and community outreach coordinator for the federation. She’s hunted around the West.
_ Gabe Vasquez, a former NMWF staffer. He’s a Las Cruces city councilor who grew up along the border and has extensive outdoor experience in the area.
Make no mistake, the NMWF recognizes the need for national security. But the federation also recognizes that, despite its enormous cost and catastrophic environmental costs, building a wall would do little to achieve that desired security.
Meanwhile, it’s clear that building a wall along the Mexican border would fragment critical wildlife habitat. And that’s where the NMWF draws the line.
For more than a century, the federation has stood up for wildlife and sportsmen in the state. Desert bighorn, jaguar and pronghorn and Mexican gray wolves are just a few of the species that currently cross the border whose migration patterns would be disrupted by the wall construction.
Healthy wildlife populations need to be able to move freely to find food, water and to breed. Walls prevent them from doing that.
