A new campaign launched last month by the Wildlands Project and Defenders of Wildlife warns that environmental degradation resulting from human migration and increased security operations along the Mexico-Arizona border must be urgently addressed to avoid impacts to endangered and threatened species.

"The window of opportunity to include ecological planning in the proposed expansion of border security infrastructure is rapidly closing," said Kim Vacariu, Wildlands Project's Southwest Director, in a news release dated August 23, 2005. The campaign is based on a detailed report generated by a Wildlands Project-sponsored Border Ecological Symposium that provided input from state and federal agencies, scientists, elected officials, and conservationists (see the news release and accompanying report at www.wildlandsproject.org/cms/page1111.cfm).

The report, titled "Ecological Considerations for Border Security Operations," notes that a process that protects both border security and wildlife habitat at the same time presents complex issues that will require broad collaboration to succeed. Blocking critical cross-border wildlife corridors used by travel-dependent species with walls and fences is a threat to survival of vulnerable animals.

According to the report, most officials in attendance agreed that "... the highest level consideration for mitigating impacts to habitat and wildlife from border security operations is international immigration policy reform that results in the channeling of immigrants through legal ports of entry rather than through other locations elsewhere along the border."

"Our hope is that this report will encourage the research and political actions necessary to make better decisions about where and how to build border security barriers, and how to design other operations so that wildlife is impacted as little as possible," said Vacariu.