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WASHINGTON -- The debate over the fence the United States is building along its southern border has focused largely on the costs, feasibility and how well it will curb ******* immigration.
But one of its most lasting impacts may well be on the ******* and vegetation that make this politically fraught landscape their home.
Some wildlife researchers have grown so concerned about the consequences of bisecting hundreds of miles of rugged habitat that they have talked of engaging in civil disobedience to block the fence's construction.
"This wall is so asinine and so wrong, I am one of a dozen scientists ready to lay our bodies down in front of tractors," Healy Hamilton, who directs the Center for Biodiversity Research and Information at the California Academy of Sciences, told colleagues at a recent scientific retreat in Tucson, Ariz. "This is one thing we might be able to stop."
"Make it 13!" said Allison Jones, a conservation biologist at the Wild Utah Project, an advocacy group.
Hamilton and Jones have yet to throw themselves before bulldozers, but their call to arms reflects the researchers' growing fears that the wall will imperil species that, in Hamilton's words, "walk, fly or crawl across that border."
Rare species such as jaguars, ocelots and long-nose bats are also likely to face problems with the new barriers, scientists said."
WASHINGTON -- The debate over the fence the United States is building along its southern border has focused largely on the costs, feasibility and how well it will curb ******* immigration.
But one of its most lasting impacts may well be on the ******* and vegetation that make this politically fraught landscape their home.
Some wildlife researchers have grown so concerned about the consequences of bisecting hundreds of miles of rugged habitat that they have talked of engaging in civil disobedience to block the fence's construction.
"This wall is so asinine and so wrong, I am one of a dozen scientists ready to lay our bodies down in front of tractors," Healy Hamilton, who directs the Center for Biodiversity Research and Information at the California Academy of Sciences, told colleagues at a recent scientific retreat in Tucson, Ariz. "This is one thing we might be able to stop."
"Make it 13!" said Allison Jones, a conservation biologist at the Wild Utah Project, an advocacy group.
Hamilton and Jones have yet to throw themselves before bulldozers, but their call to arms reflects the researchers' growing fears that the wall will imperil species that, in Hamilton's words, "walk, fly or crawl across that border."
Rare species such as jaguars, ocelots and long-nose bats are also likely to face problems with the new barriers, scientists said."