CBP Wants to Blast Bright-as-Day Lighting into Critical Wildlife Areas: A Q&A with Laiken Jordahl
A wealth of scientific data shows that nonnatural light pollution has severe impacts on migratory birds, pollinators, and nocturnal wildlife, he says.
Since 2019, Customs and Border Protection has been installing stadium lighting along the federally constructed border wall. More than 1,800 lights were installed in Arizona during the Trump administration, and in March, CBP announced plans to install 25 miles of new stadium lighting in Starr County, Texas, and to operationalize nearly 20 miles of lights in El Paso County, Texas. Much of this lighting would pass through some of the last wildlife corridors along the Rio Grande, devastating endangered wildlife and migrating birds, according to Laiken Jordahl, a conservation advocate with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s a wealth of scientific data,” he says, “that shows that this kind of nonnatural light pollution has severe impacts on migratory birds, pollinators, bats and butterflies, moths, and nocturnal wildlife, of which there are many in the borderlands.”
In this Q&A, Jordahl talks about CBP’s plans and how they will affect wildlife and border residents. He also talks about what can be done to register opposition or concerns with CBP and government officials about these impacts.
What exactly are CBP’s plans?
Right now, CBP is seeking public comments only on plans to build 25 new miles of lighting in Starr and El Paso Counties in Texas, and then also to operationalize 20 miles of lighting infrastructure that they have already built. But in the process of releasing maps to the public, they’ve inadvertently shown plans to build a huge amount of new lighting. On the CBP map, if you zoom out, you can see that they’re planning these huge swaths of new stadium-style lighting throughout New Mexico, Arizona, and California, including some of the darkest environments in the Southwest, including the bootheel in New Mexico, and the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona. So it’s not just Texas, which is concerning.
How long has the Center for Biological Diversity been following this issue? And why is the lighting so damaging to wildlife and insects?
The center has opposed border wall construction and border militarization for decades. This specific lighting project would involve blasting bright-as-day lighting into areas that are critical for migratory birds and endangered species. It’s well established in the scientific record that lighting has severe impacts on insects and pollinators, like butterflies and moths. There’s a study that shows if an insect is attracted to artificial lighting, it has a 33 percent chance of dying that exact night as a result of becoming so exhausted, by fluttering around the artificial light. So lighting attracts pollinators. It can exhaust them until they die. And, of course, that sends cascading impacts throughout the ecosystem, because these pollinators are critical for flowering plants and all sorts of other vegetation in the borderlands. The lighting also interferes with migratory birds and their sense of direction. It can confuse them and alter their migrations. You know, sometimes you’ll get notices from government agencies asking you to dim your lights, especially in South Texas, because it is such an important migratory flyway. So, it’s interesting to see one government agency asking the public to turn their lights off to help migratory birds, while another agency is actively seeking to turn the night into day.
What are the CBP’s stated reasons for installing stadium lighting?
There’s a total lack of explanation on their part. In the document that they have provided, they talk about “operational control” of the border, which is a term that they have used for years, and is extremely vague. But in reality, a lot of Border Patrol agents I’ve talked to have told me that this kind of lighting can interfere with their night vision technology. Border Patrol possesses the most advanced night vision, thermal-imaging, remote-sensing technology in the world. And this kind of floodlighting can actually interfere with some of that technology, and take away the tactical advantage that Border Patrol has in the dark. So, it makes no tactical sense. And Border Patrol has failed to explain to us why this could be necessary or even useful in their stated mission to, quote unquote, secure the border.
Can you describe in more detail the proposed 25 new miles of lighting and the 20 existing miles?
The bulk of the new lighting that they’re proposing is in Starr County, Texas. That’s the westernmost county in the Rio Grande Valley. So, the southern tip of Texas and an almost tropical, forested area. It’s beautiful wildlife habitat right along the Rio Grande. Starr County is one of the more rural and remote counties in Texas. It’s an area that doesn’t have a lot of light pollution. It’s also one of the last strongholds for wildlife in the Rio Grande Valley, because so much of it is undeveloped. There’s a huge amount of wildlife refuge land here. And these planned lights will go right through a lot of that wildlife habitat.
Starr County and the Rio Grande Valley are part of a very well-known birding corridor. People come from around the world to see birds there that they can’t see in other parts of the United States.
Yes, it is among the world’s top birding destinations.
And what about the already-existing lighting near El Paso, which CBP wants to upgrade?
The existing lighting is in the Tornillo area, southeast of El Paso. There is a lot more existing agricultural development there. It’s not wildlife refuge land, but it is near the McDonald Observatory in West Texas, which is one of the country’s preeminent sites for the study of the cosmos and astronomy. It’s also close to the Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve, which is the first international dark sky reserve in the world, which means that the International Dark Sky Association has looked at this area and designated it as one of the best places in the world to see the stars at night and to see the Milky Way. The park itself and neighboring communities have done a lot of work to minimize light pollution from nonnatural sources. So, this project could encroach upon the incredible dark night skies of the Big Bend area.
So, is there lighting already, and then they’re going to turn it into stadium lighting?
They have built almost 20 miles of lighting there, which would be upgraded. They haven’t turned it on yet. So, there’s no light pollution emanating from the project area yet. They are still evaluating whether to turn these lights on permanently.
And that’s similar to Arizona, right? Where the lights are installed, but they haven’t been turned on.
At this point, none of the stadium lighting that was installed in 2019 and 2020 has been turned on. We’ve seen images of them testing lighting in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. We’ve heard accounts of the lights near the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge being turned on. But at the moment, all of the lighting is still off. There is some lighting on the border wall in certain areas, in places like Nogales and Naco, but a lot of that lighting is older. It’s not as bright, it’s not as tall. It still has impacts, but the impacts appear to be much less severe to wildlife than the new stadium-style floodlighting.
Some lengths of the border wall are right across the street from people’s homes or in their backyards. Will this stadium lighting also affect border residents?
Starr County is one of the most rural, picturesque places I’ve been anywhere along the border. Residents who live there, many of them have had homes there for multiple generations. Some of them dating back to before Texas was even a state. So, I think people live there because they love the rural character of the land. And this kind of stadium-bright lighting will completely change that character. It will cause a massive amount of light pollution. And it will interfere with residents being able to look up and see the stars at night. It will make people feel like they’re living in a security zone.
When we talk about border walls, it’s important to add that it’s not just the wall, it’s a border-wall system, right? It’s also surveillance towers, it’s lighting. It’s all-weather roads. Can you describe what that looks like to people who haven’t seen the border wall in person?
The impact from the wall is so much greater than just the physical barrier itself. Many areas in Texas, we’ve seen Border Patrol clear out 150-foot enforcement zones, as they call it. That means bulldozing every inch of vegetation, destroying every acre of habitat along the border wall, blasting that area. The barrier stops migration of all wildlife larger than a ground squirrel or a pocket mouse. All of these impacts combine to create a massive, landscape scale of destruction that actively harms wildlife by stopping their migrations, but also just destroys a huge amount of habitat used by pollinators, by insects, by birds. And it continues to degrade the wild character of the borderlands.
What can people do to share their concerns or opposition to the border wall floodlights with CBP and the government?
We expect that CBP will soon release a draft environmental assessment. We are urging folks to comment on that environmental assessment when it becomes available. But in the meantime, people can contact the agency, they can contact their members of Congress, and urge them to call attention to this horrific proposal that really does nothing to aid in its stated goals of increasing border security. But it will cost taxpayers millions of dollars and destroy the beautiful dark night skies across the borderlands.
This is very concerning. We need to stop this excessive nighttime lighting in this important wildlife corridor ASAP!