The Bush administration is bulldozing environmental laws to build a controversial fence designed to block illegal immigrants from crossing the Mexican border. To force through its construction, the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, waived 35 separate environmental protection laws last week using provisions of the Real ID Act of 2005. The act allows him to set aside laws that might interfere with the construction of physical barriers at US borders.
Segments of fence totaling 750 kilometers are to be completed this year and will pass through many sensitive environments. In southern Texas the fence will run along flood-control levees between 100 and 1500 metres from the Rio Grande, creating what critics call a "no-man's land" between fence and river.
This section of the fence will cut through rich wildlife reserves, including the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in Alamo, the Sabal Palm Audubon Center and most of the Nature Conservancy's Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve near Brownsville. Other wild areas are threatened in New Mexico, Arizona and California.
Read the rest at New Scientist.This is particularly annoying to me. I feel "boundaries" need to become a thing of the past and a person's rights and value should not be dependent on which side of an imaginary line they live. For the US government to decide to flout the policies of decades to create what will turn out to be an ineffective barrier to humans migrating is disgusting and aggravating.
