The personal, financial, and environmental costs of a border wall in Big Bend, locals revive opposition after Trump's announcement of a refinery in Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley fights back after ICE shooting and raids, plus The Border Chronicle is seeking new paid subscribers!
“We love Big Bend the way it is. It does not need to change. We do not feel any danger, and we don’t want it to look like other places. And nothing makes a person who lives out here more mad than the idea of looking at a damn fence.”
Environmental advocates and residents say the long-proposed refinery threatens air quality and public health in a region already ringed by heavy industry.
The recent sighting of a new Jaguar in southern Arizona bodes well for the borderlands, says McSpadden of the Center for Biological Diversity.
In January, the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity confirmed an exciting discovery near the Arizona-Mexico border: the first sighting of a jaguar never previously identified in Arizona. Russ McSpadden, a Southwest conservation advocate at the center, has been tracking the jaguar population in the borderlands for several years.
The rare and elusive creatures once lived throughout the American Southwest. But they’ve nearly disappeared over the past 150 years due to habitat loss and government programs to protect the livestock industry.
For decades, the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity has worked to protect jaguars, successfully lobbying for them to be listed in 1997 as an endangered species. And in December 2022 the center petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to reintroduce jaguars to New Mexico and designate more critical habitat in New Mexico and Arizona.
In this Border Chronicle podcast, McSpadden discusses this exciting new discovery and the work that the center and others are doing to bring back the endangered jaguar population in the United States.
Get involved: Organizations protecting jaguars and their habitat include the Center for Biological Diversity, Northern Jaguar Project, Sky Island Alliance, and Conservation CATalyst. Also read this piece on cultural considerations and the current debate over naming this newly identified jaguar.
Environmental advocates and residents say the long-proposed refinery threatens air quality and public health in a region already ringed by heavy industry.
Walking from a blasted mountain top--a planned site for new border wall construction--to a makeshift military camp along the border in a remote part of southern Arizona led to a tense yet revelatory moment.
Logan Phillips was born in Tombstone, Arizona—a town best known for Old West-themed gunfight tourism. In his new book, Reckon, Phillips explores his relationship to the unusual setting of his childhood through themes of masculinity, history, and land.
In the spirit of broadening the analysis beyond ICE, Border Chronicle cofounders Melissa del Bosque and Todd Miller discuss the
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
