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How is the amount of arrests at the border determined by the time of the year?

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How is the amount of arrests at the border determined by the time of the year?

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I think that this has a connection for example, someone who wants to cross the border would want to go during winter instead of summer.

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correction

A previous version of this article incorrectly said that Border Patrol arrests along the Mexico border reached their highest levels since 1986. Historical data shows fiscal year 2021's figure was the highest total ever recorded. The article has been corrected.

U.S. authorities detained more than 1.7 million migrants along the Mexico border during the 2021 fiscal year that ended in September, and arrests by the Border Patrol soared to the highest levels ever recorded, according to unpublished U.S. Customs and Border Protection data obtained by The Washington Post.
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Illegal crossings began rising last year but skyrocketed in the months after President Biden took office. As CBP arrests increased this past spring, Biden described the rise as consistent with historical seasonal norms. But the busiest months came during the sweltering heat of July and August, when more than 200,000 migrants were taken into custody.

During a confirmation hearing Tuesday for Chris Magnus, the Tucson police chief Biden has nominated to lead CBP, Republican senators pressed him to characterize the surge as a "crisis."

Magnus called it a "significant challenge," echoing the Biden administration's preferred term, adding that "the numbers are very high." CBP is expected to release the 2021 fiscal year data later this week.

Border enforcement has become a major political liability for Biden, and the president's handling of immigration remains his worst-polling issue. He promised on the campaign trail to make the United States more welcoming to immigrants, in contrast to former president Donald Trump, whose zero-tolerance family separations generated widespread outrage in 2018.

During the transition, Biden said he wanted to move cautiously on immigration policy and avoid ending up "with 2 million people on our border."

Biden pick to lead CBP says he will enforce immigration laws humanely

Once in office, Biden quickly halted construction on the border wall, ended the "Remain in Mexico" policy, reversed key asylum restrictions and announced a 100-day pause on most deportations and enforcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Biden officials initially blamed the previous administration's policies for the increase in border crossings and said migration pressures intensified as a result of the pandemic's economic fallout. Many migrants have told reporters they opted to make the journey north, at great cost and considerable danger, with the belief that Biden would allow them to stay. A tight U.S. labor market became another pull.

Earlier this year, Biden directed Vice President Harris to address the "root causes" of migration from Central America's Northern Triangle nations - Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. But the strategy has had little to no measurable effect, and Harris has distanced herself from the border and immigration issues generally.

The latest CBP data indicates that the administration's challenges extend far beyond Central America. Mexico was the single largest source of illegal migration during the 2021 fiscal year, as the Border Patrol arrested more than 608,000 Mexican nationals.

That leaves the Biden administration in an awkward position, as it increasingly relies on Mexico to tighten enforcement and block caravan groups heading north.

Biden officials are in negotiations with Mexico to comply with federal court orders to restart the "Remain in Mexico" policy, which requires asylum seekers to wait outside U.S. territory while their cases are processed.

The second-largest grouping was composed of migrants from outside Mexico and Central America whom CBP categorized as "other," including Haitians, Venezuelans, Ecuadorans, Cubans, Brazilians and migrants from dozens of other nations. They accounted for 367,000 arrests.

They were followed by migrants from Honduras (309,000), Guatemala (279,000) and El Salvador (96,000).

"Migration to the U.S.-Mexico border is now truly global," said Cris Ramón, an independent immigration consultant in Washington. "The implications for immigration policy require a far more comprehensive approach because it's not enough to say you have to deter migration from Mexico or Central America. This has become a far more complex problem for the administration to deal with."

More than 1.3 million migrants have been taken into custody along the southern border in the nine months since Biden took office, including 192,000 last month, the latest CBP figures show.

In the fiscal years between 2012 and 2020, border arrests averaged about 540,000. The 2021 figure was more than three times that amount.

The extraordinary influx has produced a series of crises for the administration, starting this spring with record numbers of unaccompanied minors crossing without parents who were crowded shoulder to shoulder into Border Patrol tents.

Crossings by Central American family groups overwhelmed U.S. agents this summer, and in September, the sudden arrival of 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants to a crude camp in Del Rio, Tex., produced politically damaging scenes of chaos and harsh enforcement tactics by Border Patrol agents on horseback.

Immigrant advocates who backed Biden's candidacy have soured on his presidency lately, with several staging a virtual walkout last weekend during a meeting with White House policy advisers. Biden's proposals for a major immigration overhaul are stalled in Congress, and Republicans are planning to use his border record as a cudgel in next year's midterm elections.

The Biden administration has responded to criticism of the arrest numbers by noting that it continues to use the Title 42 public health policy to rapidly "expel" most adult border crossers to Mexico or their home countries.

Of the 1.7 million detained during the 2021 fiscal year, 61 percent were expelled under Title 42, the CBP data shows.

The expulsions have led to a significant increase in repeat crossing attempts by migrants who are turned back, so the number of distinct individuals taken into custody is lower than the number of arrests recorded. Recidivism rates have exceeded 25 percent in recent months, twice as high as in previous years, according to CBP figures.

"You could not reach the numbers we reached this year without recidivist border crossings," Ramón said.

Biden administration says it's ready to restore 'Remain in Mexico' next month

The 1.7 million figure includes migrants arrested between ports of entry by the Border Patrol as well as those who attempted to enter the United States without authorization through official ports of entry who were detained by blue-uniformed CBP officers.

During the 2021 fiscal year, agents apprehended 1.66 million along the Mexico border only, the latest figures show. That exceeds the 1.64 million taken into custody in 2000 along the Mexico border, according to historic data.

Those figures do not include the unknown number of migrants who successfully evaded capture after making an illegal entry that was detected by CBP sensors, video cameras or agents.

The Border Patrol refers to such entries as "gotaway" incidents, and while the agency does not publish gotaway estimates, officials have reported averages of more than 1,000 per day in recent months.

CBP's Rio Grande Valley sector was the busiest during the 2021 fiscal year, with 549,000 Border Patrol apprehensions, followed by the Del Rio sector, with 259,000, which eclipsed historically busier sectors such as El Paso and Tucson.

The CBP figures show declines in seizures of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. Analysts attribute the decrease to diminished vehicle traffic through ports of entry as a result of pandemic-related travel restrictions, as well as fewer interdictions by overstretched border agents.

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Border arrests have soared to all-time high, new CBP data shows

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Authorities took more than 1.7 million migrants into custody during the 2021 fiscal year, according to unpublished data obtained by The Post.

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How do the border affect a ecosystem in one region near the border?

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How do the border affect a ecosystem in one region near the border?

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I think the answer for this question is that Work on border walls, fences and related infrastructure, such as roads, fragments habitat, erodes soil, changes fire regimes and alters hydrological processes by causing floods, land deformation etc causing damage to the ecosystem.

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What factors help migrant and make them successful when getting a job

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What factors help migrant and make them successful when getting a job

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at least 650 migrants died crossing the us-mexico border this year - cnnpolitics

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At least 650 migrants died crossing the US-Mexico border this year

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At least 650 people died attempting to cross the US-Mexico border this year, more than any other year since an international agency began documenting deaths in 2014.

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"How the Quad Jump is Changing Women's Figure Skating," New York Times 

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"How the Quad Jump is Changing Women's Figure Skating," New York Times 

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BEIJING - The Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva's performance in the women's figure skating event this week was supposed to be a highlight of the Beijing Games.

As the sport's breakout star here, she was expected to land quadruple jump after quadruple jump, just a week after the team event, where she became the first woman to land one at the Olympics. And Valieva, 15, would land those jumps with ease, like a bird floating onto a tree branch.

After it was made public last week that she tested positive for a banned drug, the question now is whether she can perform the way she always does, and that's with near perfection, amid a doping scandal that nearly cost her the right to compete here. Arbitrators ruled on Monday that she could skate, but that no medals ceremony would take place if she finished in the top three because her doping case is under investigation. After Tuesday's short program, she was in first place despite a stumble.

Valieva, trusty stuffed rabbit not far from her side, is ready to show off the quadruple jump that has helped lift the sport to another level. She is one of just 12 women who have landed the quad cleanly in competition, and she is expected to land several in Thursday's free skate.

"Now you pretty much need a quad to medal at the Olympics," said Mirai Nagasu, who in 2018 became the first American woman and third overall to land a triple axel at the Olympics. "To me that sounds crazy, but it's true."

In 2018, Nagasu's triple axel was the coveted skill at the Olympics. Since then, the bar to succeed in the sport has soared into another stratosphere. The quadruple consists of four full revolutions in the air before the skater, less than a second later, lands on one foot. It's a Russian specialty in the women's free skate.

Valieva and her Russian teammates - Anna Shcherbakova, 17, and Alexandra Trusova, 17 - are capable of landing more than just one quad in their free skate, the only program in which women are allowed to perform quads. They land several of them.

They are so good at those quads that even the top male skater, the Olympic gold medalist Nathan Chen, said he did not want to compete against them.

"They are so awesome that I think they'd beat all of us," he said with a laugh.

Men have been landing quadruple jumps for years, beginning in 1988 when Kurt Browning of Canada first performed one. But on the women's side, the advent of the jump, and its necessity for success, is relatively new and has shaken up the sport.

Note: The chart includes all attempted quads since 2005, regardless of how they were scored. The world championship was canceled in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2002, Miki Ando of Japan became the first woman to land a quad in international competition. For years, no one else landed the jump in an international event. But since the 2018 Olympics, 12 women, including nine Russians, have done so.

What sparked this quad era in women's skating - now called the Quad Revolution - was a monumental leap Trusova took one month after the 2018 Olympics, when she was 13.

Note: Only skaters who have landed at least one quad with positive grade of execution are shown.

At the junior world championships, Trusova, now known as the Quad Queen, landed two quads - a toe loop and a salchow. Last fall, she landed five quads in one free skate, serving notice to her competitors worldwide: The points race was on.

If other skaters wanted to catch her, they needed to up their games because quads, even landed poorly, can be worth more points than other jumps. A skater who performed a clean quad could score more than twice the number of points she would earn with a triple.

When Trusova skates, you can almost hear the sound of an adding machine calculating her points as they pile up, starting with the high base values for her quadruple jumps. From there, more points are added for how well she executed the jump, if it was done in combination with another jump and if it was landed in the second half of her program.

"Honestly, the Russians are so far ahead when it comes to base values, nobody will probably beat them," said Adam Rippon, who coaches the American Olympian Mariah Bell. "That's just the hard truth of where skating is right now. But over time that will change. It always changes."

The landscape of women's figure skating changed when Russian teenagers began taking over the sport eight years ago.

Adelina Sotnikova was 17 when she won the Olympic gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Games. It was Russia's first Olympic gold in that event and fourth Olympic medal in women's skating, including when it won bronze in 1984, as the Soviet Union. Four years later, at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, Alina Zagitova, at age 15, won the gold, and Evgenia Medvedeva, at 17, won the silver.

All three Russian women in singles skating in Beijing - Valieva, Trusova and Shcherbakova - are expected to win medals and sweep the event, just as the Russians did last year at the world championships. Even the fifth-place skater at Russia's 2022 championships performed quad jumps - three of them.

And all three of Russia's Olympic skaters are coached by Eteri Tutberidze at the Sambo-70 club in Moscow. Tutberidze coached Zagitova and Medvedeva, too, and gets the credit for coaching seven of the 12 women who have landed quads in international competition.

Before Valieva's failed drug test was made public, Nikita Katsalapov, the Russian ice dancer and team captain, was asked if he knew Tutberidze's secret to coaching the quad jump.

"You need to ask this to Eteri," he said. "There is a secret, for sure, and I'm wondering what it is, too."

The mystery is deeper now that the Valieva scandal has cast a shadow over the entire Russian skating program, particularly because Russia is already under penalty for implementing a state-run doping scheme at the Sochi Olympics. Whatever role performance-enhancing drugs turn out to have played at the Beijing Games, it's clear that Russia has a different sports system than nearly every other country, including the United States.

Their Olympic sports on an elite level are government-funded, so athletes don't have to pay for coaches or time on the ice or off-ice training - or anything.

Drew Meekins - who coaches Alysa Liu, the only American woman in Beijing to land a quad and one of only two American women to ever land one - said that Russians' access to intensive training benefits those learning the hardest skills.

If an athlete needs nine hours of training in one day to perfect a quad, Meekins said, she can easily get that time. In the United States, top coaching costs about $100 an hour, so many athletes, even on the elite level, pay for only a fraction of an hour a day and practice on their own otherwise, he said.

There is another important factor behind the Russian dominance lately, said Jim Richards, a former biomechanics and movement science professor at the University of Delaware who studied jumping in figure skating. He said the Russian women have the perfect body type for quads.

"They're skinny, and the skinnier they are, the faster they can spin," he said. "Of course they have to be athletes, but being able to do a quad is partly about physical attributes. If they're born that way and that's what their metabolism is, wonderful. But I'm not sure if it's a healthy thing to push these skaters toward quads if they have to look this way."

Based on Richards's studies, skaters ideally must be in the air for a minimum of 63-hundredths to 64-hundredths of a second and achieve a jump height of about 20 inches to land a quad.

The height of a quad can be as much as 5 percent to 8 percent higher than a triple jump, said Deborah King, a biomechanist at Ithaca College who studies figure skating. She estimates that Trusova and Scherbakova are jumping about three to four inches higher in their quads than in their triples.

Skaters must get into their best rotating position before they reach the highest point of a quadruple jump, which is earlier than for a triple, King said.

If they cannot jump 20 inches, Richards said, skaters must spin faster to compensate. One obstacle is often in the way, though - and that's the fear of injury.

"You have thousands of years of evolution that taught you, 'OK, I really don't want to spin any faster because I'm going to get hurt,'" he said.

Liu, 16, a two-time national champion, was the first American woman to land a quad, when she was 14. It was "really scary" to learn, she said.

"You have to be mentally tough and kind of reckless to do it," she said.

It's even scarier to do when you grow several inches, as Liu has in the past two years. Spinning got harder as her center of gravity shifted. She was also rebounding from a hip injury and in the process of relearning her triple jumps, so the quad quickly fell out of her grasp. She hasn't attempted one since March 2020.

"I did have one and did do it for a little bit," she said of the quadruple jump. "But now I don't, and I'm OK with that."

Notes: Skaters' orders are based on their rankings at the latest national championships. Alysa Liu withdrew from the 2022 U.S. National Championships; her score was taken from the last ISU Grand Prix she competed in, the NHK Trophy in November 2021. All other athletes' scores are from the most recent national championships.

Even though Liu plans to perform a triple axel at the Olympics - a jump that four years ago was also an amazing and rare feat for women - the base value of the components in her programs will not make her competitive with the Russians under normal circumstances.

This was the Russians' plan for more than a decade, said Tara Lipinski, an Olympic champion and figure skating analyst for NBC, explaining that they have gone out of their way to use the point system to their advantage and push the technical limits of the sport.

At the 2018 Olympics, the Russians relied on triple-triple jump combinations in the second half of their programs (for the 10 percent jump bonus given in the second half) to win the gold medal. For years, they have tailored the way they teach jumps to young skaters, Lipinski said, so they have the fundamentals to master a quad.

Those skaters implement a tweak here and a tweak there to their technique so that by the time they are ready to try a quad, all the components are in place for it: takeoff speed, height, tight body position as they rotate and quickness in rotating the body as soon as the feet leave the ice.

This must be done: The quad is now a part of women's skating.

"We laugh about it," Lipinski said, "because almost every month there's a new skater that you hear of who has a quad. It's what Olympic athletes are made of, and I think that's extraordinary."

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How the Quad Jump Is Changing Women's Figure Skating

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BEIJING - The Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva's performance in the women's figure skating event this week was supposed to be a highlight of the Beijing Games. As the sport's breakout star here, she was expected to land quadruple jump after quadruple jump, just a week after the team event, where she became the first woman to land one at the Olympics.

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"Why the Quad Revolution in Women's Figure Skating is a Tragedy," Washington Post

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"Why the Quad Revolution in Women's Figure Skating is a Tragedy," Washington Post

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Body Size, Coping Strategies, and Mental Health in Adolescent Female Athletes, International Journal Sports Science and Coaching

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Body Size, Coping Strategies, and Mental Health in Adolescent Female Athletes, International Journal Sports Science and Coaching

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Sport-Specific Injuries and Medical Problems in Figure Skaters, Wisconsin Medical Journal 

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Sport-Specific Injuries and Medical Problems in Figure Skaters, Wisconsin Medical Journal 

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How does the newly built border wall effect the population of the Sonoran Pronghorn?

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How does the newly built border wall effect the population of the Sonoran Pronghorn?

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It cuts its habitat in half and can't migrate efficiently.

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Why do specifically monarch butterflies migrate?

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Why do specifically monarch butterflies migrate?

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I think the answer to this question is because that because there's more of that species and it's easier to travel

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what is the effect of the border on mental health 

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what is the effect of the border on mental health 

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i think the answer to my question is to prevent illegal substances getting into united states

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how many people get arrested in South Texas in a year and what are the most common reason they are arrested 

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how many people get arrested in South Texas in a year and what are the most common reason they are arrested 

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i think that about 10,000 get arrested in a year

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Why would posting cameras around gaps in the border be an effective deterrent to migrants? How would we prove it was effective?

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I think that the cameras could capture the foot traffic of the animals, such as ocelots, while still capturing the people who try to sneak by. You would also have to have a way to protect the cameras from rain, sabotage, and other types of damage.

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how has climate change in rio grande effect native animals

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how has climate change in rio grande effect native animals

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Do different butterflies effect the environment differently when they migrate.

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Do different butterflies effect the environment differently when they migrate.

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I think the answer is " it does not because all butterflies are the same and do the same thing.

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How Quads are changing women's figure skating, New York Time 

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How Quads are changing women's figure skating, New York Time 

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The Monarch is well known for its ability to travel great distances, and the migrations in North America are one of the greatest natural phenomena in the world. This butterfly is also very occasionally recorded from the British Isles, making it our largest and rarest migrant butterfly.

Monarch butterfly fact file

Size:

Large with a wingspan 95-100 mm

Foodplant:

Caterpillars require Milkweed.

Habitat:

A native of the United States. It occurs wherever their foodplant grows; including farmland, gardens, parks and roadsides.

Epic migration:

Monarchs fly up to 100 miles per day during their annual migration

Autumn spectacular

Every autumn, millions of monarch butterflies migrate 3,000 miles from their breeding grounds in northeastern North America to spend the winter in the forests of southwestern Mexico. Each migration is by a new generation, so they cannot learn from others. Instead, they rely on their genes. Their antennae have a genetic clock that tells them when to migrate and to navigate they measure the sun's position on the horizon with their eyes.

Super generation

The autumn migration of monarch butterflies is completed by just one super generation that can fly and live eight times longer than regular monarch butterflies. When spring arrives these monarchs reproduce and their offspring continue to complete their journey back to their summer breeding grounds.

Crafty caterpillars

The Monarch butterfly caterpillars feed solely on Milkweed plants - which is toxic to most animals. M onarchs have evolved to tolerate it and use it to their advantage, storing the toxins in their bodies and making themselves poisonous to predators.

A matter of survival

Monarch butterflies must migrate because they cannot survive long cold northern winters. When they arrive in Mexico, they huddle together in on Oyamel fir trees. Each tree may be blanketed in tens of thousands of 'roosting' butterflies. They hang almost motionless in semi-dormancy, surviving the winter on their stored energy.

View this video of them overwintering en masse in Mexico.

Conservation in action

Millions of Monarch butterflies migrate each year, but sadly their numbers are declining at a worrying rate. To protect them, the El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Reserve in Mexico was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2008, as the concentration of overwintering butterflies there was deemed "a superlative natural phenomenon". However, recent assessments of this eastern population, have shown that during winter 2019-2020 the overwintering Monarchs occupied just 2.83 hectares of the Mexican forest, compared to 6.05 hectares the previous winter.

Climate change, pesticide use and habitat loss, both in the United States and in Mexico, all threaten their populations. To add to this, defending the roosting sites from illegal logging is very dangerous work. In January 2020, two butterfly activists were killed whilst trying to protect this forest.

To track their migration, hundreds of volunteers have been tagging the butterflies with small stickers. Recording where these tagged butterflies go has helped scientists learn more about their migratory routes, including the time and pace of the migration and any changes in geographical distribution.

Organisations like the Xerces Society are working with farmers, communities and roadside managers across North America, to restore and manage more habitat for Monarchs. Citizens can help by planting native milkweeds, cease using garden pesticides and by getting involved with citizen science projects. International support is needed to ensure that this incredible migration continues.

You can find out more about the migration of the Monarch butterflies in a new display in Animal Senses on Level 3 of the National Museum of Scotland.

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The Monarch is well known for its ability to travel great distances, and the migrations in North America are one of the greatest natural phenomena in the world. This butterfly is also very occasionally recorded from the British Isles, making it our largest and rarest migrant butterfly.

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how does the US/Mexico border wall threaten the ocelot population?

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Why are young females not spoken about enough regarding migration? Do you think females are more hesitant to share their migration story?

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Why are young females not spoken about enough regarding migration? Do you think females are more hesitant to share their migration story?

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I think young females aren't talked about enough because whenever people think of migration they think of fathers or men traveling because of jobs for family etc. Which isn't the case because it's mostly mothers or young females migrating to help their families with work because the father figure has either left them or even died. I think some females may be hesitant to share their migration stories because they are mostly targeted for victims of sexual assault etc. not saying that men don't get sa females are probably more likely in migration than men. i think i may have to look that up just going off something from what i've heard couples months ago.

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How are birds affected in the area by climate change and how are they reacting to it?

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How are birds affected in the area by climate change and how are they reacting to it?

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I think that the birds of the area are confused on how to move from one place to another since the weather is getting too confusing to find a pattern.

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Question: What are the reasons why children who migrate to the U.S. don't get enrolled to schools at a young age?

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Question: What are the reasons why children who migrate to the U.S. don't get enrolled to schools at a young age?

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I believe the answer to this question is the reasons the children who migrate don't get enrolled to schools is because maybe the parents want them to work in small places or the parents might think it's risky for their children to go to school because they may get deported back.

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do the numbers of people in different groups change every year or do they stay generally the same

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how does climate change affect the migration patterns of different kind of birds.

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how does climate change affect the migration patterns of different kind of birds.

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I think the different migration patterns can affect on different types of breeds ( of birds) on there climate , because when the weather changes the birds might not migrate back to the South .

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What's the difference between a flock of birds and a rainstorm?

It sounds like a dad joke-but it's a serious question for biologists. Scientists have recently come up with a new way to track migrating birds using weather technology.

And they're finding that climate change may be affecting the movements of billions of birds each year.

A study released yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that rising temperatures are causing birds to migrate a little earlier each spring. It finds that the journey home is shifting forward by a little less than two days each decade.

That doesn't sound like much. But what's striking about the results is that they apply to hundreds of migrating species all over the country.

In other words, climate change is causing a noticeable, if gradual, shift in one of nature's grandest natural phenomena.

The researchers, led by Kyle Horton of Colorado State University, analyzed millions of radar scans collected between 1995 and 2018. They used a high-tech method to differentiate between migrating birds and weather systems-a special type of artificial intelligence known as a neural network. Neural networks rely on complex sets of algorithms and can be trained to recognize patterns in data.

In this case, the researchers trained their neural network to sort biological patterns-that is, flocks of birds-from precipitation patterns on the weather scans. They also examined climate data from across the country.

The results revealed that the spring migration is shifting earlier, and it seems to be driven by rising temperatures. The researchers observed some shifts in the fall migration as well, although the relationship with temperature was much weaker.

Previous studies have suggested that some types of birds may be altering their migration patterns in response to climate change. But the new study looks at the issue using a much larger scale. The results reflect the behavior of hundreds of species, from the East Coast to the West.

While rising temperatures seem to be the driving force generally, their exact effects on bird behavior may vary from one species to the next. Bird migrations are thought to be influenced by a variety of factors, such as the growth of new plants or the availability of food.

These relationships are important to investigate in the context of a changing climate, the authors suggest. Other studies suggest that global warming may also be affecting the timing of spring vegetation blooms or the abundance of insects and other food sources-factors that can strongly affect the survival of migrating birds.

Some scientists are concerned that shifts in migration patterns may not necessarily keep in sync with these other consequences of global warming and that some bird species may suffer as a result.

In the meantime, migration timing isn't the only indicator that global warming is affecting migratory birds. Earlier this month, a study of 52 species published in Ecology Letters found that birds' bodies are getting smaller over time while their wingspans are getting longer, apparently in response to rising temperatures.

The smaller size may allow the animals to lose body heat faster as the climate warms, the researchers suggest.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news a twww.eenews.net.

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Millions of Birds Are Migrating Earlier Because of Warming

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What's the difference between a flock of birds and a rainstorm? It sounds like a dad joke-but it's a serious question for biologists. Scientists have recently come up with a new way to track migrating birds using weather technology. And they're finding that climate change may be affecting the movements of billions of birds each year.

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How does the wall affect communities on both sides of the wall?

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How does the wall affect communities on both sides of the wall?

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I think that the answer of this question is the wall affects people living or staying where the wall is going to be at and separate families

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i think the numbers will go up because more and more people will want to migrate because of things like jobs, and safety.

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i believe the border wall has separated two groups of ocelots. the road dividing the two groups is dangerous and is very threatening. i think this is why ocelots are endangered and their population is decreasing.

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how does more border patrol agents effect migrants chances of making it to the us

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I think that one of the factors of why a migrant would get hired could be because the have a good amount of knowledge about whatever they are signing up for.

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SA in females and males during migration

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SA in females and males during migration

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Each year, countless women and children flee violence at home and take an uncertain journey in the hope of finding safety in a new country. While many escape conflict zones or generalized human-rights abuses, some also run from more intimate forms of violence-namely, sexual and domestic violence perpetrated by men. Setting off on the journey is no guarantee of safety; many are vulnerable to gender-based abuse in transit and even at destination. Along some migrant routes, half or more of women surveyed reported experiencing sexual assault during the journey, and many take birth control to avoid becoming pregnant from rape.

Gender-based violence is defined as "violence that is directed against a person on the basis of gender or sex," according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Though men and boys can also suffer from sexual assault, the majority of victims are women and girls, who tend to be the most vulnerable. Unequal power relations create the conditions for gender-based violence to occur, and it can be perpetrated or condoned by relatives, community members, or government actors. Such abuse inflicts sexual, physical, or mental harm, and can take the form of threats, coercion, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, or honor killings. Survivors experience a range of physical and psychosocial effects, including injury, sexually transmitted diseases, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, social stigma, rejection, and isolation.

While gender violence is not uncommon among female migrants, individual cases of trauma and experiences accessing support vary considerably. This article explores the rates of gender violence among refugee, asylee, and migrant women; avenues of immigration available to survivors in the United States; and supports offered once women are lawfully admitted.
A Treacherous Journey
The rise of gender-based violence stemming from conflict is correlated with the changing nature of conflict itself. In the past, wars pitted countries against one another and had distinct battlegrounds; today, conflicts are largely contained within a country's borders and are increasingly waged against unarmed civilians. Rape is used as a deliberate military strategy to disrupt communities and instill fear, and in ethnic conflicts as a tool for both "cleansing" and social control. Modern conflicts disrupt traditional social structures, leading to an increased risk of gender violence. Ethnic differences, socioeconomic discrimination, and group rivalries can exacerbate these risks. Lack of economic opportunity in societies where males are traditionally the providers can also lead to increased violence at home.

Instances of rape are particularly common in conflict zones. More than 20,000 Muslim women were raped during the Bosnian War in the early 1990s, while an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 women were raped during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, according to UNHCR. Further, 94 percent of households displaced during the decade-long Sierra Leone civil war reported at least one member experienced sexual assault. Ongoing armed conflicts reflect similar patterns: Upon their arrival in Tanzania, 23 percent of female Burundian refugees reported they had experienced gender-based violence, and mass rapes of relatives of government opponents or refugees are an element of the conflict in Burundi, according to the Women's Refugee Commission. These figures are likely to be underreported, due to the stigma often assigned to survivors.

Even as they flee conflict zones, women and children remain at risk. Smugglers often target women and girls traveling alone by attempting to coerce those with limited financial resources into exchanging sex for a place on a boat. Nearly half of the migrant women and children surveyed in Libya for a 2017 UNICEF study reported sexual violence and abuse on their journey, often at multiple times or locations. The snapshot survey also found a growing number of female refugees take birth-control shots to prevent pregnancy due to rape, and one-third of respondents reported their abuser wore a uniform. Women and children who enter into "pay-as-you-go" schemes with smugglers are often left in debt, and as such are more vulnerable to abuse and trafficking.

Once in countries of first asylum, women and children can experience a lack of protection and security due to the social structure of predominantly male-led camps. Female refugees may be forced to sleep alongside male refugees, even if they are traveling alone, and camps often lack single-sex, well-lit toilet facilities. Burundian refugee camps in Tanzania have a high rate of sexual offenses, with up to 14 percent of children reporting assault, according to the Women's Refugee Commission. In Greece, researchers from the Refugee Rights Data Project spoke to more than 300 refugees and aid workers in nine different camps and found instances of rape, forced prostitution, and forced marriage. Of the female refugees surveyed, 46 percent reported they did not feel safe in the camp, and 69 percent resided in dwellings without a secure lock.

Refugee girls face the additional risk of early and forced marriage, often because their families cannot support them. In 2013, 25 percent of Syrian refugee children in Jordan reported being forced into marriage, and 48 percent of these marriages involved a spouse ten or more years older. Female refugees who face gender-based violence and lack effective protection normally provided by male relatives comprise one of UNHCR's refugee resettlement categories, however this does not necessarily place them at the front of the line for resettlement.
Fleeing Violence in Central America
The rising numbers of Central American women and girls making the journey to the United States in recent years, driven largely by violence and poverty in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, face many of the same risks as asylum seekers in other parts of the world. A significant share experience sexual or physical abuse by smugglers, migrants, or even government officials: Between 60 percent and 80 percent of female migrants traveling through Mexico are raped along the way, according to estimates from a study by Amnesty International and reporting by Fusion. Women migrating from Central America to the United States also take contraception to prevent pregnancy in the event of rape, indicating they are fully aware of the risk of assault-yet still choose to undertake the journey.

Many women and children make the trek northward to escape the violence they experienced in their home country, whether by family members or organized criminal groups, including gangs. In 2013, El Salvador had the highest rate of gender-motivated killing of women in the world, with Guatemala coming in third and Honduras seventh. Fewer than 3 percent of these murders are resolved by the courts. Children are also vulnerable to abuse: Out of 96 Central American migrant children surveyed by Kids in Need of Defense, 30 said they had experienced sexual or gender-based violence in their home country, 21 of whom reported migrating to escape it.

Women often do not report the abuse to police, believing the process to be futile. In a UNHCR survey of women who had demonstrated to U.S. officials a credible fear of being returned to their native country, 40 percent of those who said they experienced sexual assaults, rapes, physical attacks, and threats did not report them to police. (Separately, 10 percent reported the police themselves were the perpetrators.) Owing to the high levels of violence against women in the region, in fiscal year (FY) 2015, 82 percent of women from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico screened at the U.S. border had a significant chance of establishing eligibility for asylum, according to UNHCR.
Pathways to Protection in the United States
Although the United States does not include gender in its grounds for asylum, women subjected to gender-based violence may qualify for protections through the asylum program. Generally, applicants for asylum must show that they have either experienced persecution or have a well-founded fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a specified social group, or political opinion in their country of nationality. UNHCR provided guidance in 2002 stating that, while gender alone is insufficient to qualify for asylum, a "gender-sensitive interpretation" of permitted grounds should be applied. Women and children fleeing gender violence may apply for asylum defensively if they are apprehended and detained near the border, or can apply affirmatively from inside the country within one year of entry.

In 1996, an immigration court issued a landmark decision granting asylum to a woman who fled her country to escape female genital cutting, thereby opening the door to future gender-based asylum claims. However, prior to 2014, U.S. asylum officers and immigration judges provided inconsistent opinions on whether intimate partner violence qualified as a basis for asylum. Court decisions reflected a belief that while gender-based violence could constitute persecution, violence by a partner remained a personal and private issue and was not the responsibility of the state. Many immigration judges perceived female asylum seekers to be seeking special accommodation, as they did not fit within the existing asylum criteria, according to researcher Karen Musalo.

In 2014, the Board of Immigration Appeals determined that a Guatemalan asylum seeker who had been beaten and raped by her husband belonged to the social group, "married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship," in which marital status could be considered immutable if the woman was unable to leave due to religious, moral, or legal constraints. In this case, the woman was granted asylum based on her membership in this group. While this ruling was rooted in a broad legal principle for establishing persecution based on membership of a social group, it was also narrow and specific to the facts of the case.

The burden of proof placed on these asylum seekers is relatively high, and many face obstacles to having their claims approved. From 2014 to 2015, the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies tracked 67 cases in which women sought asylum based on intimate partner violence. The study found that some women had difficulty establishing credibility, similar to criminal cases involving rape, and judges did not always take cultural practices and norms into account. Courts were split regarding eligibility for asylum in cases where the woman was not married to the abuser. Women face additional challenges in connecting the dots between the abuse suffered and their gender and social status. Successful asylum applicants must further show that the government in their country of nationality is unable or unwilling to protect them in order to explain why abuse may have gone unreported.
Protections Outside the Asylum System
Survivors of gender violence have avenues beyond the asylum process for immigration relief. Under the Violence Against Women Act, several immigrant and nonimmigrant visa categories are available for victims of partner violence, sexual assault, rape, or human trafficking. Spouses of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents (i.e. green-card holders) may be eligible for permanent residence on the basis of that abuse, allowing victims to obtain lawful status without their abuser being notified and to move toward a life of safety and independence. There is no limit on the number of visas available for the abused spouses of U.S. citizens; the visa is open to all genders, and applicants are not required to show lawful admission.

Further, victims of a number of crimes, including those constituting gender violence, may be eligible for a nonimmigrant U visa in exchange for working with law enforcement or government officials in the investigation or prosecution of that crime. Recipients must show that they suffered "substantial physical or mental abuse" as a result of the crime. However, the program is limited to crimes that either occurred within the United States or violated U.S. laws, and just 10,000 visas are issued per year.

Survivors of human trafficking may also be eligible for a nonimmigrant T visa, created to allow victims to remain in the United States to assist law enforcement or government officials with the investigation or prosecution of human trafficking. Children under age 18 or those experiencing severe trauma may be exempt from cooperating with law enforcement. This program is limited to those who were trafficked into the United States, and just 5,000 visas are issued each year.

Both visa categories generally require an affidavit by law enforcement attesting to the survivor's cooperation, and they allow survivors to later adjust to lawful permanent resident status. Approval rates for both petitions tend to be high: In FY 2016, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved 750 applications for T visas and denied 194. Due to the U visa cap, USCIS approved 10,046 applications and denied 1,843, while 86,980 were pending by the end of FY 2016.
Obstacles to Accessing Support
As with applying for asylum, filing for nonimmigrant status as a survivor of a sexual or gender-based crime generally requires the support of law enforcement or government officials. For some, however, fear of deportation can be a deterrent to seeking help, creating a catch-22-particularly in the current stepped-up enforcement environment. Reports suggest the increase in immigration enforcement activities, including arrests outside courthouses, has led to an overall decline in crime reporting among immigrant populations. Abusive spouses may threaten to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if the immigrant reports the abuse to police.

In Houston, Hispanics reported 43 percent fewer sexual assaults between January and March 2017, compared to 2016. Los Angeles police have noted similar trends during the same time period, including drops of 25 percent and 10 percent in sexual assault and intimate partner violence reporting, respectively, among the Latino population. In an April 2017 survey of advocates, immigrant organizations, and legal service providers, 78 percent of respondents reported concerns among their clientele about working with police, 75 percent noted concerns about going to court, and 43 percent had clients who eventually dropped their cases due to fear of deportation. Yet without reporting crimes or working with the police to help prosecute perpetrators of sexual or gender-based violence, victims can be cut off from the few avenues available to them for obtaining lawful status.

In addition to the challenges of navigating the immigration system, survivors of gender-based violence also may face stigma within their community due to the assault or their decision to leave an abusive spouse. Lack of lawful status may prevent them from accessing bank accounts previously shared with a partner, as well as limit job prospects. Support services can also be limited due to language barriers, especially if the survivor speaks a less common language. Finally, as with all survivors of gender-based crimes regardless of immigration status, reporting abuse or assault to the police exposes the immigrant to potential retaliation by their abuser.

Obstacles also exist in getting support for victims of gender-based violence who have been granted asylum or resettled as refugees. Despite the fact that both groups tend to experience similar trauma, they are not eligible for similar benefits. Refugees-nearly half of whom are women-receive health screenings before entering the country and after they arrive. They receive aid from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and resettlement agencies in the form of cash and medical assistance, and can access programs that provide a case manager and address employability and social integration. To determine whether refugees need mental health support, the Centers for Disease Control established guidelines for screenings, however these are not consistently conducted. A recent study of mental health screenings completed by 112 refugee women found that 23 percent were found to need mental health services. Mental health and trauma-informed services are provided to survivors of torture, but the torture must have occurred "under the color of law," that is, perpetrated by government or law enforcement officials.

For individuals granted asylum, finding adequate support can be even more challenging. Asylees tend to come to the United States at their own expense and must support themselves throughout asylum proceedings. Unlike refugees, asylees are not assigned a case manager, and must find either a resettlement agency willing to assist them or apply independently in order to receive benefits. Attorneys often lack the time or knowledge to adequately explain to asylees the benefits for which they are eligible, and those granted asylum may remain unaware. As of 2014, just 50 percent of USCIS asylum offices provided an orientation on asylum benefits. Meanwhile, mental health conditions are common among asylum seekers: In a 2017 study by Keller et al., 77 percent of the sample detained asylum seeker population had clinically significant symptoms of anxiety, while 86 percent had symptoms of depression and 50 percent experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Further, severity of the symptoms was correlated with time spent in detention.
Surviving and Thriving?
Trauma among refugees and asylum seekers is undeniable, and the vulnerability of women and unaccompanied girls heightens the risk of further abuse at all stages of the journey. Though the evidence shows these women are significantly likely to suffer from gender-based violence, support services in the United States do not sufficiently address the health needs of this population. Globally, the situation is also dire: Fewer than 1 percent of all refugees will receive mental health support, and just $1 of every $1,000 devoted to humanitarian aid goes to mental health care, according to Reuters.

Even after reaching the United States, inadequate supports may still hinder the recovery of survivors. Current administrative practices, including increased immigration enforcement, exacerbate the fears already present in the unauthorized immigrant community and may discourage women from seeking out support services. These policies may lead to unintended consequences, especially if women remain with an abusive spouse or partner because of a fear of deportation, and may ultimately hamper their ability to not only survive, but thrive.
Sources
The Advocates for Human Rights. 2010. Gender-Based Asylum. Updated January 2010. Available online.

Al Jazeera. 2017. RRDP: Women Fear Violence and Rape in Refugee Camps. Al Jazeera, January 24, 2017. Available online.

Bonello, Deborah and Erin Siegal McIntyre. 2014. Is Rape the Price to Pay for Migrant Women Chasing the American Dream? Splinter, September 10, 2014. Available online.

Burnett, John. 2017. New Immigration Crackdowns Creating 'Chilling Effect' on Crime Reporting. National Public Radio, May 25, 2017. Available online.

Cassella, Megan, and Serena Maria Daniels. 2017. As U.S. Braces for Syrian Refugees, Mental Health Services Lag. Reuters, October 28, 2015. Available online.

Chishti, Muzaffar and Jessica Bolter. 2017. The Trump Administration at Six Months: A Sea Change in Immigration Enforcement. Migration Information Source, July 19, 2017. Available online.

Giles, Wenona and Jennifer Hyndman. 2004. Introduction: Gender and Conflict in a Global Context. In Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones, eds. Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Johnson-Agbakwu, Crista E., Jennifer Allen, Jeanne F. Nizigiyimana, Glenda Ramirez, and Michael Hollifield. 2014. Mental Health Screening among Newly Arrived Refugees Seeking Routine Obstetric and Gynecologic Care. Psychological Services 11 (4): 470-76.

Lockhart, P.R. 2017. Women Are Now Living With the Fear of Deportation If They Report Domestic Violence. Mother Jones, May 25, 2017. Available online.

McVeigh, Karen. 2017. Refugee Women and Children 'Beaten, Raped and Starved in Libyan Hellholes'. The Guardian, February 28, 2017. Available online.

Medina, Jennifer. 2017. Too Scared to Report Sexual Abuse. The Fear: Deportation. New York Times, April 30, 2017. Available online.

Musalo, Karen. 2015. Personal Violence, Public Matter: Evolving Standards in Gender-Based Asylum Law. Harvard International Review 36 (2): 45-8.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2014. Guidelines for Mental Health Screening during the Domestic Medical Examination for Newly Arrived Refugees. Updated May 8, 2014. Available online.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 2017. Number of Form I-914, Application for T Nonimmigrant Status, by Fiscal Year, Quarter, and Case Status 2008-2017.. Updated June 8, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. Number of Form I-918, Petition for U Nonimmigrant Status, by Fiscal Year, Quarter, and Case Status 2009-2017. Updated June 8, 2017. Available online.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement. 2012. Asylee Eligibility for Assistance and Services. Available online.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement, Administration for Children & Families. 2016. Refugees. Updated January 28, 2016. Available online.

---. 2015. Women on the Run. Geneva: UNHCR. Available online.

UNICEF. 2017. A Deadly Journey for Children: The Central Mediterranean Migration Route. New York: UNICEF. Available online.

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Gender-Based Violence against Women: Both Cause for Migration and Risk along the Journey

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The changing nature of conflict has brought an uptick in gender-based violence in war-torn countries, with instances of rape particularly common in conflict zones. While many women leave their countries to escape such violence, setting off on the journey is no guarantee of safety, as they are vulnerable to further gender-based abuse in transit and at destination.

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Preparers

David King, U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station Center for Research on Ecosystem Change, University of Massachusetts; Deborah M. Finch, U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Grassland, Shrubland, and Desert Ecosystems Program.
An archived version of this topic page is available
Issues

A discussion of avian responses to climate change is of interest for a number of reasons. First, because birds are relatively easy to identify and measure and their responses to environmental perturbation are relatively well known, they are useful as indicators of ecological change (1). Furthermore, birds are of conservation interest in their own right. Bird populations face global conservation challenges, with 1 in 8 species facing a high risk of extinction in the near future according to a recent report (2). Finally, birds perform significant ecosystem services with consequences for human health and well-being, including pest control, sanitation, seed dispersal and pollination (3).

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Likely Changes

Research on birds has shown that climate change affects birds both directly and indirectly. The distributions of birds are closely associated with both winter and summer temperatures, and increased temperatures due to climate change may directly affect birds by forcing them to use more energy for thermoregulation. This can disrupt their maintenance (the energy needed by organisms to maintain their basal levels of activity and condition) , reproduction, timing of breeding and migration, and reduce survival or fitness (4). Birds may respond to these costs by shifting their ranges over time to areas with more suitable thermal conditions, but habitat and other resources may be insufficient or unsuitable for their needs (5).

Generally speaking, global temperatures decrease with increased latitude and elevation, so a fundamental prediction of climate scientists is that species will shift towards the poles and upward in elevation (6; 7). Long-term changes in North American bird distributions show clear evidence of latitudinal shifts, with many species shifting their geographic distributions northwards over the past few decades (8, 9). Elevational shifts have also been reported in long-term datasets, and these shifts appear to implicate changes in precipitation as well as temperature. In the Sierra Nevada mountains, data show that the majority of species ranges have shifted upwards in elevation since the 1940s, with some bird species more closely associated with temperature shifts and others with changes in precipitation (10).

Climate-related shifts in species distribution along latitudinal and elevation gradients have important implications for conservation. If shifts in temperature take place at a more rapid rate than vegetation responses, or occur beyond the boundaries of suitable potential vegetation, then bird populations could be forced into areas of marginal habitat where they are likely to experience decreased survival and reproduction (4). With elevational shifts, the area available for species to colonize as ranges shift upwards also decreases with elevation (11). For this reason, montane species are considered to be especially vulnerable to climate change. This concern is highlighted by recent evidence of declines of montane spruce-fir indicator species on the White Mountain National Forest, including the threatened Bicknell's Thrush (Catharus bicknelli; 12). Analyses of these same data also show an upward shift of bird species from lower forest areas into montane forest, which is consistent with general observed patterns that show middle elevation species shifting upwards (13).

In contrast to expectations, DeLuca (13) also reported that the montane spruce-fir bird species that occupy the forests nearest tree line are actually shifting downwards in elevation. This might at first seem like a cause for optimism, since there is more area at lower elevations, and thus montane bird ranges would not be constricted at the lower end of an elevational gradient. A more detailed analysis however indicates that lower elevations are marginal habitats for montane birds where they experience lower pairing and nesting success, and therefore lower reproductive success. These results demonstrate some important aspects of climate change research: they contradict the prevailing paradigm that species will respond to climate change by shifting their ranges towards higher elevations, and they highlight the necessity of considering aspects of fitness as well as the distribution of organisms in relation to climate change, because shifts might not be adaptive.

In addition to these direct effects, increased temperatures associated with climate change have the potential to cause a myriad of indirect effects.. One of the most widely reported is the de-synchronization of migrant bird reproduction with food resources. Many bird species synchronize their nesting cycle so the period of maximum food requirements of the young coincides with the maximum food availability (14). In the case of migratory birds, which comprise the majority of species and individuals in many temperate ecosystems, their departures from winter areas are related to photoperiod, whereas the availability of their largely insect food resources is affected by plant phenology. Since plant phenology is related to climate and is advancing in most regions, migratory bird species are in some cases arriving and therefore breeding too late to keep pace with the timing of their food supply (15).

Other indirect effects are mediated by changes in the types and timing of disturbance. In parts of the western U.S., climate change is manifested by drought conditions that increase the frequency and severity of wildfires. These disturbances can impact birds directly by destroying nests and altering habitats. For example, in the Great Basin the effects of drought on fire regimes is compounded by the invasion of cheatgrass ( Bromus tectorum), an exotic species introduced from Eurasia. Cheatgrass is more flammable than native grasses, and as drought conditions increase, fire frequency and severity increases and plant species adapted for less severe fire regimes are replaced by cheatgrass, which further increases extreme fire behavior. The synergistic effects of climate, fire and invasion are blamed for loss and fragmentation of big sagebrush habitats needed by sagebrush obligates like sage thrasher ( Oreoscoptes montanus) sage sparrow ( Amphispiza belli), and greater sage-grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus), a candidate species for listing under the Endangered Species Act (16). West Nile virus models also show climate's influence in this region, predicting disease spread to more western locations and states. This could impact vulnerable birds like the greater sage-grouse, which withdraws during droughts to water sources where it can be infected by mosquitos potentially carrying the virus. Finally, studies of high elevation birds in Arizona show that lower snowpack associated with climate change allows greater access to montane areas by elk, and recent declines in several species of migratory songbirds could be the result of decreased reproductive success resulting from habitat degradation from over-browsing (17).

There have been dramatic changes in global climate before, however the current challenge to species and ecosystems from climate is not only the degree of change but the rate. Rapid changes in environmental conditions are likely to exceed the ability of many bird species to adapt via natural selection (18). This concern has led to increased interest in identifying species characteristics associated with vulnerability to climate change (19). In addition to the examples presented above showing that montane and western grassland species are negatively affected, analyses of data from the Breeding Bird Survey are underway to determine whether traits like migratory status, clutch size or geographic range affect the vulnerability of bird species to climate change, as indicated by elevational and latitudinal shifts in their distributions (20). Because responses to climate change are largely species-specific it is expected that species will recombine into novel communities, which could present additional challenges as species are exposed to predators or competitors for whom they have no evolved defenses (21).

Management Options

Strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change on bird populations include maintaining the resilience of their habitats by reducing compound stressors that potentially interact with climate change and magnify its impact. The effect of cheatgrass on fire regimes mentioned above is an example that illustrates the potential compounding effects of invasives. Other examples include habitat fragmentation and pollution. Where necessary, habitat resilience can be increased through active management, which can maintain robust growth and reproduction of native plants to mitigate the impacts of drought, heat stress and other climate-related effects (22). Other strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change include increasing the area of protected lands to include greater representation of habitat refugia, where species are predicted to be buffered from the effects of climate change because of site characteristics. Establishing and maintaining habitat connectivity among preserves and along elevational and latitudinal gradients by establishing corridors or networks of preserves could also facilitate shifts by climate-sensitive species (23).

Projects are underway nationwide to enhance resiliency through habitat improvement of ecosystems considered susceptible to climate change. For example, the Central Appalachian Spruce Restoration Initiative is a multi-partner collaboration of individuals and organizations who share the common goal of restoring the red spruce-northern hardwood ecosystem across the high elevation landscapes of Central Appalachia. The US Forest Service is a key player in this initiative, and recent accomplishments include planting, silvicultural treatments and removal of exotic species to enhance spruce regeneration, as well as reforestation and habitat acquisition to reduce fragmentation. These efforts will help priority species within this threatened ecosystem to withstand the effects of climate change or shift their range to track suitable climate conditions. Similar practices are being embraced by National Forests in their forest plan revisions. For example, the Kaibab National Forest in Arizona implements fuels control treatments and mechanical thinnings in an attempt to reduce the risk of pest and disease outbreaks and catastrophic wildfire, all of which are expected to increase with continued climate change.

King, D.; Finch, D.M. 2013. The Effects of Climate Change on Terrestrial Birds of North America. (June, 2013). U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Climate Change Resource Center. www.fs.usda.gov/ccrc/topics/wildlife/birds

Recommended Reading

Chen, I. C.; Hill, J.K.; Ohlemuller, R.; Roy, D.B.; Thomas, C.D. 2011. Rapid range shifts of species associated with high levels of climate warming. Science. 333: 1024-1026.

Devictor, V.; Julliard, R.; Couvet, D.; Jiguet, F. 2008. Birds are tracking climate warming, but not fast enough. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 275: 2743-2748.

La Sorte, F.A.; Jetz, W. 2012. Tracking of climatic niche boundaries under recent climate change. Journal of Animal Ecology. 81: 914-925.

Luoto, M.; Heikkinen, R. 2008. Disregarding topographical heterogeneity biases species turnover assessments based on bioclimatic models. Global Change Biology. 14: 483-494.

Parmesan, C.; Yohe, G. 2003. A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. Nature. 421: 37-42.

Peterson, A.T. 2003. Projected climate change effects on Rocky Mountain and Great Plains birds: generalities of biodiversity consequences. Global Change Biology. 9: 647-655

Thomas, C.D.; Franco, A.; Hill, J.K. 2006. Range retractions and extinction in the face of climate warming. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 21: 415-416.

Thomas, C.D.; Cameron, A.; Green, R.E.; Bakkenes, M.; Beaumont, L.J.; Collingham, Y.C.; Erasmus, B.F.N.; Ferreira de Siqueira, M.; Grainger, A.; Hannah, L. 2004. Extinction risk from climate change. Nature. 427: 145-148.

Virkkala, R.; Marmion, M.; Heikkinen, R.K.; Thuiller, W.; Luoto, M. 2010. Predicting range shifts of northern bird species: Influence of modelling technique and topography. Acta Oecologica. 36: 269-281

Walther, G.R.; Post, E.; Convey, P.; Menzel, A.; Parmesan, C.; Beebee, T.J.C.; Fromentin, J.M.; Hoegh-Guldberg, O.; Bairlein, F. 2002. Ecological responses to recent climate change. Nature. 416: 389-395.

Modeling potential future habitats for trees and birds in the eastern U.S.
Our group, the Landscape Change Research Group, from Delaware, OH lab of the Northern Research Station, have been modeling potential changes in suitable habitat for trees and birds of the eastern US. These maps are available online at www.nrs.fs.fed.us/atlas. We also look at dispersal potentials through another modeling toolset, and work with modification factors to understand more about the factors not readily modeled.
Contact: Louis Iverson

Pacific Northwest Wildlife Habitat
RMRS scientists are collaborating with scientists from the Pacific Northwest Station and the University of Washington to develop methods to generate forested landscapes given climate change. These landscapes will be linked to multi-scale wildlife habitat models currently under development at RMRS.
Contact: Sam Cushman

Predicting the Effects of Climate Change on Avian Abundance
Using a longterm dataset (27+ years), researchers are examining the effect of weather patterns on avian abundance at the San Joaquin Experimental Range, an oak woodland savanna in California, to reveal potential climate change effects on demography and identify species at risk.
Contact: Kathryn Purcell, Sylvia Mori

References

1. Niemi, G. J.; McDonald, M. E. 2004. Application of Ecological Indicators. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. 35: 89-111.

2. Vie, J.-C., Hilton-Taylor, C.; Stuart, S.N. (eds.) (2009). Wildlife in a Changing World - An Analysis of the 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. 180 pp.

3. Sekercioglu, C.H; Daily, G.C; Ehrlich, P.R. 2004. Ecosystem consequences of bird declines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 101:18042-18047.

4. Crick, H. Q. P. 2004. The impact of climate change on birds. Ibis. 146:48-56.

5. Devictor, V.; Julliard, R.; Couvet, D.; Jiguet, F. 2008. Birds are tracking climate warming, but not fast enough. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 275: 2743-2748.

6. Rodenhouse, N. L.; Matthews, S. N.; McFarland, K. P.; Lambert, J. D.; Iverson, L. R.; Prasad, A.; Sillett, T. S.; Holmes, R. T. 2008. Potential effects of climate change on birds of the Northeast. Mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change 13:517-540.

7. Matthews, S.N.; Iverson, L. R.; Prasad, A. M.; Peters, M. P. 2011. Changes in potential habitat of 147 North American breeding bird species in response to redistribution of trees and climate following predicted climate change. Ecography. 34: 933-945.

8. Hitch, A. T.;Leberg, P. L. 2007. Breeding distributions of North American bird species moving north as a result of climate change. Conservation Biology. 21:1523-1739.

9. LaSorte, F. A.; Thompson, F. R. III. 2007. Poleward shifts in winter ranges of North American birds. Ecology. 88:1803-1812.

10. Tingley, M. W.; Monahan, W. B.; Beissinger, S. R.; Moritz, C. 2009. Birds track their Grinnellian niche through a century of climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106:19637-19643.

11. Sekercioglu, C.H.; Schneider, S.H.; Fay, J.P.; Loarie, S.R. 2008. Climate Change, Elevational Range Shifts, and Bird Extinctions. Conservation Biology. 22: 140-150.

12. King, D. I.; Lambert, J. D.; Buonaccorsi, J. P.; Prout, L. S. 2008. Avian population trends in the vulnerable montane forests of the Northern Appalachians, USA. Biodiversity and Conservation. 17:2691-2700.

13. DeLuca, W.V. 2012. Ecology and conservation of the high elevation forest avian community in northeastern North America. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

14. Visser, M.E.; Holleman, L.J.M.; Gienapp, P. 2006. Shifts in caterpillar biomass phenology due to climate change and its impact on the breeding biology of an insectivorous bird. Oecologia. 147: 164-172.

15. Both, C.; Visser, M.E. 2001. Adjustment to climate change is constrained by arrival date in a long-distance migrant bird. Nature.411: 296-298.

16. Finch, D. M. 2012. Climate change in grasslands, shrublands, and deserts of the interior American West: a review and needs assessment. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-285. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 139 p.

17. Auer, S. K.; Martin, T. E. 2013. Climate change has indirect effects on resource use and overlap among coexisting bird species with negative consequences for their reproductive success. Global Change Biology. 19:411-419.

18. Visser, M.E. 2008. Keeping up with a warming world; assessing the rate of adaptation to climate change. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 275: 649-659.

19. Cormont, A.; Vos, C.C.; van Turnhout, C.A.M.; Foppen, R.P.B.; ter Braak, C.J.F. 2011. Using life-history traits to explain bird population responses to increasing weather variability. Climate Research. 49: 59-71.

20. Auer and King, In review

21. Lurgi, M.; Lopez, B. C.; Montoya, J. M. 2012. Novel communities from climate change. Philosphical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 367:2913-2922.

22. Millar, C. I.; Stephenson, N. L.;Stephens, S. L. 2007. Climate change and forests of the future: managing in the face of uncertainty. Ecological Applications. 17:2145-2151.

23. Mawdsley, J.R.; O'Malley, R.; Ojima, D.S. 2009. A review of climateâ€change adaptation strategies for wildlife management and biodiversity conservation. Conservation Biology. 23: 1080-1089.

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Effects of Climate Change on Terrestrial Birds of North America

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Preparers David King, U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station Center for Research on Ecosystem Change, University of Massachusetts; Deborah M. Finch, U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Grassland, Shrubland, and Desert Ecosystems Program. An archived version of this topic page is available A discussion of avian responses to climate change is of interest for a number of reasons.

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“At least 650 migrants died crossing the US-Mexican border this year

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“At least 650 migrants died crossing the US-Mexican border this year

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https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/12/09/politics/migrants-dying-crossing-us-mexico-border/index.html

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(CNN) At least 650 people died attempting to cross the US-Mexico border this year, more than any other year since an international agency began documenting deaths in 2014.

The International Organization for Migration -- the agency documenting the deaths -- didn't specify the reason for the deaths but crossing the US southern border is often a dangerous journey that over the years has resulted in deaths and rescues.

"The rising migrant death toll in the region is highly alarming," said Michele Klein Solomon, IOM Regional Director for Central and North America and the Caribbean, in a statement.

Arrests of migrants along the US southern border this year remained high, even during months when numbers usually dip, meaning that thousands were exposed to even more difficult elements.

US Customs and Border Protection has previously said a majority of migrant border deaths have been related to heat exposure. The agency recorded 557 southwest border deaths during fiscal year 2021. That's up from 254 deaths in fiscal year 2020 and 300 deaths in 2019, marking a significant increase amid a 30-year record year for border crossings.

There were also 12,854 Border Patrol rescues this past fiscal year, far surpassing the previous four years, which is as far back as the agency has tracked this data. The previous high was in 2019, with 5,335 rescues.

In June, when rescues were already spiking, CBP said smuggling organizations were abandoning migrants in remote and dangerous areas, leading to a dramatic rise in the number of rescues.

Since 2014, 5,755 people died while migrating across Central America, North America and the Caribbean, IOM found.

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At least 650 migrants died crossing the US-Mexico border this year

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(CNN) At least 650 people died attempting to cross the US-Mexico border this year, more than any other year since an international agency began documenting deaths in 2014. The International Organization for Migration -- the agency documenting the deaths -- didn't specify the reason for the deaths but crossing the US southern border is often a dangerous journey that over the years has resulted in deaths and rescues.

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“What is happening at the I.S. Southern border?”

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“What is happening at the I.S. Southern border?”

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https://www.rescue.org/article/what-happening-us-southern-border

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Violence, climate change, rising poverty, and COVID-19 are forcing thousands of people from northern Central America, Haiti, and other places in crisis to flee their homes. Many, including unaccompanied children, have undertaken a dangerous journey to the United States southern border to ask for asylum.

Seeking asylum is legal under both domestic and international law-even during a pandemic. People arriving at the U.S. border have the right to request asylum without being criminalized, turned back to danger or separated from their families.
Leer en español: ¿Qué está pasando en la frontera sur de Estados Unidos?
The U.S. asylum system can best be described as broken and brutal, a reality that was exacerbated by the previous administration. But while President Joe Biden has announced ambitious goals, his administration has shown little progress toward building a fair and humane asylum system. Instead, he has continued policies that criminalize asylum seekers and turn them away at the border, putting thousands of lives at risk.

Find out what's happening, what the Biden Administration must do, and how you can help.

Who is crossing the U.S.-Mexico border?

Asylum seekers are people who ask for protection in another country because they fear violence or persecution in their home country. Many of the people attempting to reach safety by crossing the U.S.-Mexico border have no choice but to flee. They are women escaping gender-based violence, LGBTQ people fleeing persecution, and families and children seeking protection from gang violence.

A substantial number of asylum seekers are fleeing violence, persecution, and natural disasters in Haiti and the northern Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Asylum seekers also come from Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil, India, and African countries, such as Eritrea, Ghana, Ethiopia and Cameroon.

"People are usually displaced within their own countries first," says Meghan Lopez, the IRC's regional vice president for Latin America. "However, the vast majority encounter risks and deteriorating living conditions similar to the ones they fled, leaving them no choice but to seek safety elsewhere."

Learn more about how the asylum system works.

Is seeking asylum legal during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Seeking asylum is always legal under both domestic and international law, including during a pandemic.

Epidemiologists and other public health experts have made clear that asylum seekers and their children can be safely processed at the border using public health measures. Even Chief Medical Officer to the President Dr. Anthony Fauci has said that immigrants are not the driving force behind the spread of COVID-19.

Turning asylum seekers away not only violates U.S. law, it sends people, including families with children, back to places where they face persecution and threats to their lives.

Is the Biden Administration allowing asylum seekers into the U.S.?

Despite releasing plans and blueprints to reform the asylum system, the Biden Administration has continued policies that criminalize and turn away individuals and families seeking safety.

The Biden Administration has continued policies that criminalize and turn away individuals and families seeking safety.

The Trump Administration used COVID-19 as a justification to immediately expel asylum seekers under a public health code called Title 42. This code remains in effect today, meaning most asylum seekers still are quickly turned away without ever being able to present their case for asylum. The exceptions are unaccompanied children, some families, and those impacted by a Trump Administration policy called "Remain in Mexico" or the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).

MPP forces those who apply for asylum at the southern border to wait out their cases in dangerous conditions in Mexico with little access to legal counsel. The Biden Administration initially terminated the program before the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision to order its reinstatement. Although the administration claims to still want to find a way to end MPP, it has since worked with Mexico to continue and even expand the program.

The Biden Administration has also expanded immigration detention and is deporting Central American asylum seekers to unfamiliar areas of Mexico. People held in detention are at increased risk of COVID-19 in a system notorious for inhumane conditions and woefully insufficient medical care, while expulsions and deportations further the spread of COVID-19. Due to systemic racism and rampant racial profiling, Black immigrants are at disproportionate risk of ICE detention and deportation.

"For every step forward the Biden Administration has taken on asylum, it takes two steps backward...." says IRC director of immigration Olga Byrne. "The Biden Administration has so far demonstrated a lack of will to dismantle a broken and brutal system exacerbated by the previous administration and replace it with a system centered on dignity and protection."

The IRC called on the previous administration and continues to call on the Biden Administration to end this use of Title 42 and to build a fair and humane asylum system.

Learn more about President Biden's policies.

Why are Haitians seeking asylum?

Haiti is facing political strife after the assasination of its president, a public health crisis with little to no infrastructure to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, and the near-constant onslaught of natural disasters. This summer, Tropical Storm Grace hit Haiti just days after an earthquake devastated parts of the country and left over 2,000 people dead.

Effective in August, the Biden Administration announced that Haitians already in the U.S. would be eligible for temporary protected status, or TPS. TPS allows people from designated countries to live and work in the U.S. because their own country is suffering from armed conflict or natural disaster.

However, despite its recognition of Haiti's crisis, the administration continues to turn away Haitian asylum seekers. U.S. Border Patrol were documented pursuing Haitian asylum-seekers on horseback armed with whips, abuse that is the direct result of an immigration system that criminalizes-rather than protects-people seeking safety.

The obstacles Haitians face on their way to safety start long before reaching the US-Mexico border. There have been reports of Mexican security forces being deployed to the South of the country--specifically in the state of Chiapas-to block the way of asylum seekers.

Why are people fleeing Central America?

People are facing worsening conditions in a region that has for years suffered from extreme poverty and some of the world's highest murder rates outside of warzones.

In the final months of 2020, CuéntaNos, part of the International Rescue Committee's global information platform for refugees and migrants, saw a 1,500% increase in questions from Central Americans about immigration.

Why is this? First, the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have worsened conditions in the region, with an estimated 45.4 million people forced into poverty in 2020 alone. Struggling communities faced another blow in November when hurricanes Eta and Iota struck within three weeks of one another, leaving 3.4 million people in need of urgent assistance.

Gender-based violence is also pervasive in the region. Requests for women's services and protection information doubled on CuéntaNos from October to November last year. Women and girls seeking safety are stuck in shelters filled beyond capacity with families who lost their homes to the hurricanes. Privacy is limited in these shelters and reports of sexual violence are on the rise.

All of these conditions are exacerbating the violence already plaguing the region.

"The hardest part about living in El Salvador is the violence," says 23-year-old Valentina*, who fled to the U.S. after her family was threatened by gangs. "This is what makes life hard, because you leave your house and you don't know if you'll return. So, yes, this is a war."

Honduras, considered the most dangerous country in the region, sees 38 murders per 100,000 people, even after a drop in homicides in recent years. A woman is murdered every 36 hours, mostly by an intimate partner.

Why is there a problem with unaccompanied children crossing the border?

Like other asylum seekers, unaccompanied children are crossing the border to escape violence and persecution.

Escalating crises are forcing families to make impossible decisions and to send teenagers-or even young children-on a journey fraught with its own dangers, including human trafficking. Many of these children are trying to reunify with parents or other legal guardians already living in the U.S.

Are more people attempting to cross the U.S. southern border under the Biden Administration?

The U.S. Border Patrol came in contact with more than 213,000 migrants attempting to cross the border in July, up from 189,000 in June. It's critical to put these numbers in perspective: 1.7 million people attempted to cross between ports of entry (official border crossings) in 2000, for instance.

Why are more people asking for asylum now?

Worsening living conditions across Latin America and other regions, including those caused by the recent hurricanes and the earthquake that devastated Haiti, are contributing to an increase in the number of people who are forced to leave their homes to seek safety.

U.S. policy also plays a role: before leaving office, the previous administration unfairly and inhumanely barred asylum seekers by enforcing policies, such as family separation, that were often condemned by Americans.

The Biden Administration faces the challenge of unwinding the Trump Administration's disastrous decisions. While the administration has taken steps in this regard, its use of Title 42 and other damaging policies continue to put asylum seekers at risk. The U.S. must close this dark chapter in its history.

Watch an Instagram story on the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border and the IRC's work.

What should the Biden Administration do to help asylum seekers?

The U.S. has the resources and capability to treat asylum seekers with dignity. Here is what the Biden Administration should do:

Urgently scale up partnerships with humanitarian organizations on both sides of the border that can meet the needs of asylum seekers.

Stop the use of Title 42 to turn away asylum seekers.

Immediately end expulsion flights to Haiti, stop expulsions of Haitians at the U.S. southern border and end immigration authorities' use of violence against asylum seekers.

Send more humanitarian aid to Central America, to address the crisis at its root and to protect and meet the basic needs of people undertaking the dangerous journey to the U.S.

End Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detentions, expulsions, and deportations during the coronavirus pandemic.

Learn more about how the Biden Administration can create a humane asylum system.

What is the IRC doing to help?

The IRC provides critical support to asylum seekers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, in northern Central America and in response to the Venezuela crisis. Additionally, the IRC announced an emergency response to support recovery efforts led by local organizations after the earthquake that hit Haiti in August.

The IRC provides case management, humanitarian reception, and legal assistance to tens of thousands of asylum seekers, unaccompanied children, and other vulnerable people seeking protection in the U.S. each year. We have worked with partners to provide over 26,000 individuals with emergency humanitarian reception services at our Phoenix Welcome Center in 2021 alone. We are also working with partners to respond to asylum seekers' urgent needs and to provide free legal assistance to migrants facing deportation.

In Mexico, the IRC is responding along the main migration corridors: from the southern to the northern borders and in Mexico City. The IRC's programs offer a timely and comprehensive response to the most urgent needs of people on the move, including: prevention and response to gender-based violence; access to critical information through InfoDigna, a multi-channel information platform; prevention and mitigation of COVID-19; economic recovery and development; child protection services; cultural orientation for individuals that have chosen to stay in Mexico; as well as identifying needs and referring cases to local service providers. Additionally, the IRC launched a response to support Afghan evacuees arriving in the country's capital.

In northern Central America, the IRC is supporting individuals and families in vulnerable situations or at increased risk for violence and displacement. The IRC's programming includes multi-purpose cash transfers to satisfy basic needs; the creation of safe spaces for women, youth and the LGBTQ+ community; case management and psychosocial support; and CuéntaNos, a digital platform-part of the Global Signpost project -to provide people with critical, up-to-date information and two-way communication and support with trained moderators.

In Haiti, the IRC is supporting the critical work of local Haitian organizations FOSREF, Kay Fanm and FADHRIS to aid the recovery efforts from the earthquake and Hurricane Grace.

How can I help asylum seekers?

Donate to help the IRC provide critical aid to refugees and asylum seekers worldwide.

Tell the Biden Administration to protect the rights of Haitian asylum seekers.

Share this article with your friends and family on Facebook or Twitter to remind them that seeking asylum is a right.

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What is happening at the U.S. southern border?

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Violence, climate change, rising poverty, and COVID-19 are forcing thousands of people from northern Central America, Haiti, and other places in crisis to flee their homes. Many, including unaccompanied children, have undertaken a dangerous journey to the United States southern border to ask for asylum.

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https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/border-crisis-cbp-s-response

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Last Modified: Jun 30, 2023

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Districts across the nation have raised questions about their responsibilities in providing educational services to the most recent wave of immigrant children, specifically those from the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Many of these children have arrived unaccompanied, countless numbers have done so illegally, and the vast majority have little or no knowledge or understanding of English.

Children who arrive in the United States without an accompanying adult are cared for at one of approximately 150 shelters whose operation is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services. While at the shelter, all expenses for caring for the children, from food and clothing to immunizations and other medical care, are paid for by the federal government. Although children in these shelters receive educational services, they are not allowed to attend school offsite. Only after they are released to a sponsor - a parent, other relative, or family friend - are children allowed to enroll in public school. It is these children, who in the past year alone number nearly 63,000, that school districts aren't sure what to do with.
Source: USA Today for the number of unaccompanied children released to sponsors by state
Part of the problem districts are facing is that they have difficulty determining the child's educational background when their sponsor brings them in to enroll. Oftentimes the sponsor is unaware of the child's history, and language barriers can prevent the child from conveying their history themselves. As a result, school districts are unsure of where to place children and what services they may need. Sometimes schools don't even know if a student has been vaccinated, which is a requirement for enrollment.
Federal Law Mandates Free Education For All
All children in the United States, regardless of their immigration status, citizenship, or country of origin, are entitled to a free, public education, just like children who are born in this country. According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Education, the number of immigrant students in the country is up to 840,000, with another 4.6 million students who are learning English as their second language.

Fortunately, there are a number of existing resources that local school districts can use in order to address their growing enrollment and pay for the supplemental expenses associated with expanded services for English language-learners, disabled children, and poverty-stricken children that come to this country. According to the Department of Education, these resources include:

English Language Acquisition Programs - Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provides funding for immigrant and other limited English proficiency students. States are required by law to save up to 15 percent of these funds for distribution to school districts that undergo significant increases in enrollment. These funds can be used for tutoring, expanded instruction, course materials, and other resources to improve language skills.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) - Funding from IDEA can be used to evaluate any child, including unaccompanied immigrants. If a child is determined to have a disability, they are entitled to special education services just like any other student.

Services for Educationally Disadvantaged Children (Title I) - Title I involves programs to boost the achievement of children in high poverty areas. If an immigrant child attends a school that qualifies for Title I funding, they may be eligible to receive extended services. Title I also includes Migrant Education Programs, which provide services for children who are migrant workers or whose parents are migrant workers. Again, these funds could be used to provide services to unaccompanied immigrant children if they meet the criteria for the program.

Despite the ability to use these existing sources of funding, some school districts are scrambling to find more money to pay for what they expect to be a flood of new students who will require supplementary services.

From Maryland to California, schools are bracing for potential budget shortfalls as enrollment increases and demand for services increases along with it. In the hardest hit areas - Texas and Florida in particular - districts are begging state officials for more money to supplement Title I, Title III, and IDEA funding. In Miami-Dade County, where the largest number of recent unaccompanied minors will attend school this fall, extra federal and state funding is on the way to help cover the additional $2,000 in expenses each immigrant child's education costs the district. That district has an abundance of resources to meet the language learning needs of children, as it has long been a destination of immigrants. But the district is concerned about the influx of enrollment this fall after enrolling over 300 children in the waning months of this past school year alone.

Some districts, including Whitfield County and Dalton Public Schools in Georgia, have established English training academies to help unaccompanied immigrant students begin the process of learning English. But many students who come from Central America don't even speak Spanish, but their local Mayan dialects instead. As a result, the progress is slow and programs must be extended into the summer months, which increases the costs. When the costs for health screenings, psychological services, free and reduced meals, and technology training are added in, the price tag can become quite large.
Open Arms in San Francisco
The San Francisco city council passed a resolution earlier this year to provide emergency humanitarian assistance specifically to unaccompanied children seeking refuge in the United States. The San Francisco Unified School District has followed suit, with members of their Board of Education urging the district to add teachers, expand services, and dedicate funding to meet the needs of these children.

These proactive measures typify what the school district has done for many years - welcome new students with open arms. Each year, hundreds of newcomer students arrive in the district and need intensive services in order to be successful. But with the number of students rapidly increasing from 840 in the 2012-2013 school year to 1,029 and counting for the 2014-2015 school year, the district needs to expand it's already robust programming to meet the additional demand.

The hallmark of the district's immigrant student services is the Pathway Program. This program involves intensive English language learning coursework, as well as wraparound services that meet the social, emotional, psychological, and legal needs of immigrant children, many of whom have come to this country to escape abject poverty and violence back home. When adding to the mix that this new wave of children is coming in without their parents, expanding these services makes the most sense. In fact, the district is working with other agencies in the city to coordinate programs so the diverse needs of each immigrant student are met. Social service agencies, churches, and local charities are just a few of the entities involved in the effort.

City and school district officials believe that providing comprehensive services to these children will not just benefit students, but will benefit the community in the long run. Ensuring supports are in place to help children receive services to meet their immediate medical and mental health needs, and as they age, finish high school, procure employment, attend college, and find suitable housing, will negate much of the financial burden the city would face if these children fell through the cracks and came to rely upon social service programs to get by.

San Antonio is faced with a unique situation of having to make preparations for a possible influx of unaccompanied immigrant children to their district without really knowing what the number of kids will be. Approximately 1,200 children are currently being housed at Joint Base San Antonio - Lackland, and hundreds more are being cared for by charities and shelters throughout the city. So far, government officials insist that the children at the Lackland camp will be educated there and not be enrolled in schools in San Antonio. The same has been said for children currently residing in the city's shelters.

However, officials don't know how many of these children will be assigned to a sponsor during the school year and if their sponsor will be a local resident. What's more, hundreds of children have already been placed in foster care, and those that have will be enrolling in a San Antonio School. But again, there seems to be no firm understanding of how many children that involves. Without that knowledge, the San Antonio Independent School District is making preparations to deal with a surge of students who will need a comprehensive support program in order to succeed.

Only five states have taken in more unaccompanied immigrant children than North Carolina. That state, which has to date been highly cooperative in finding sponsors for children, has begun to raise questions about the financial burden they may face if they continue to take children in. Governor Pat McCrory has criticized the federal government for a lack of transparency about the number of children entering the state, as well as their locations, and is concerned that the presence of these needy children will impact the state's ability to fund social services for state residents.

Still, many in the state argue that, in addition to being obligated under federal and international law to provide assistance to these children, the bulk of the burden of caring for them will fall not to state-funded social services but to non-profits and social organizations. However, the governor's critics also admit that local schools will face challenges to accommodate the influx of children, particularly because it is unknown how many children will enroll, or even how many children have been placed with sponsors in any given city.
Unwelcome in Parts of Texas
Unfortunately, other municipalities are not viewing the influx of immigrant children with the same positivity displayed in San Francisco. In League City, Texas, the city council voted earlier this year 6-2 to ban undocumented children from entering the city, let alone enrolling in their schools. Those in favor of the ban cited concerns about health and safety as being the primary underpinnings of the proposed ordinance. A similar measure banning immigrant children was also passed in Galveston County, Texas, although no reasons were given publicly for the ban that was passed by county commissioners by a 4-1 vote.
Other Responses Vary from Pity to Rage
The responses of state and local officials of the need to house and educate unaccompanied immigrant children elsewhere in the country vary widely. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Davenport, Iowa, city officials have reached out to local charities to identify locations where children could be housed. In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie said he would consider any request from the federal government to house children in his state. Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts has pledged the same. However, Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont has notified the federal government that his state lacks the resources to care for these children, while citizens in Murrieta, California and Oracle, Arizona have actively tried to block busses carrying immigrant children from entering their cities.

As some municipalities have made moves to block the entrance of unaccompanied immigrant children into their schools and towns, the federal government has issued strict warnings not to do so. Attorney General Eric Holder issued a statement earlier this year reminding school districts of their legal obligation to educate all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, immigration status, or citizenship. In his statement, Holder said that attempts to prevent these children from getting an education "weaken our nation" and leave children "unequipped and ill prepared to succeed."

Opponents of providing an education to immigrant children generally cite health and safety concerns, financial difficulties, and logistical issues as their primary reasoning for refusing to allow children to enroll in school. But without access to public schools - which provide safe harbor, food, access to medical care and counseling, socialization and enculturation, and English language learner courses in addition to traditional educational curricula - these children will become the burden that opponents are so afraid of. They will have no place to go, no understanding of our primary language, no skills, and very likely no hope. While providing educational services to immigrant children will be expensive and will test the mettle of many school officials and take some schools to their very capacity, turning these kids away will have far greater consequences for cities and states. In this instance, in might behoove local officials to examine how San Francisco is handling the situation. It is a testament to an entire city that views these children as human beings in need, rather than an undue burden that strains local resources.

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Public Schools Struggle to Accommodate Unaccompanied Migrant Children | PublicSchoolReview.com

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Undocumented and unaccompanied migrant children, particularly among Hispanic populations, are rapidly increasing in number, especially in the southern United States. Federal law requires public schools to provide services to all children. Yet, many schools are struggling to accommodate this new wave of potential students who come to them without parents or guardians, while some municipalities are flat out refusing to accommodate these children.

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More than half of world’s refugee children ‘do not get an education’, warns UNHCR

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Refugee children in their millions are missing out on an education, the UN said on Friday, in an appeal to host countries to back more inclusive policies to prevent them from “languishing” in camps for years and losing hope.

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Question: How has the rate of migration from Central America changed over the past 40 years and why?

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Question: How has the rate of migration from Central America changed over the past 40 years and why?

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I think there are probably economic problems or violence in some Central American countries-or perhaps the region as whole-driving this.

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The majority of Central Americans who want to migrate internationally are driven by economic factors, report says

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The majority of Central Americans who want to migrate internationally are motivated by economic factors, a new report found.

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Vice President Kamala Harris's recent trip to Guatemala to meet with that country's political leaders was one of several recent initiatives undertaken by the Biden administration to address the root causes of migration from the Northern Triangle Countries (NTCs) of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to the United States-the nations driving what has come to be known as the U.S. "border crisis."

Since the summer of 2014, an estimated 311,000 migrants have left NTC countries each year, and dramatic news stories about large numbers of would-be border crossers at the U.S.-Mexico border have dominated U.S. media headlines, largely shaping our nation's public discourse around immigration. Unlike previous migrations, most recent Central American migrants have been unaccompanied minors and families with small children, a situation that has spawned a humanitarian challenge as government agencies have struggled to find adequate shelter and process them.

The cruel and exceedingly harsh asylum and immigration policies enacted by the previous administration in response to the crisis separated thousands of young children from their families and resulted in tens of thousands of migrants being turned away, forced to live in situations of protracted violence and limbo in Mexico or return to dangerous situations in their home countries. President Biden, seeking to redress the chaos created by these inhumane policies, has sought to respond to large waves of border crossers-more than 19,000 in March 2021 alone-amidst a global pandemic. Formally ending the highly destructive "Remain in Mexico" policy and cancelling Trump's cruel limits on asylum eligibility for migrants fleeing gangs or gender-based attacks have been important first steps. However, fixing this complex situation, which has been decades in the making, will not happen in a few months or even a few years; a critical step, however, is to fully acknowledge the complex historic and sociopolitical contexts, as well as the localized root causes, that have led, and continue to influence, these large migratory flows.
MIGRATION FROM CENTRAL AMERICA HAS DEEP ROOTS
Media accounts often describe the large-scale migration of Central Americans as a relatively recent phenomenon; however, these displacements originated almost 40 years ago, propelled at first by brutal civil wars in the isthmus region-the result of centuries of stark historical inequalities and dominance by business and military elites, as well as marked U.S. intervention in the region.

Such long-term intervention, predicated on assumptions of white supremacy, has indeed been central to shaping the unequal economies and autocratic governments that have so weakened NTCs to this day. Starting with the emergence of newly independent nation states in 19th century Latin America, the Monroe Doctrine of 1893 was touted as an expression of positive U.S. opposition to European colonialism; in reality, however, the doctrine was based on the assumption that (largely Indigenous and mixed race) Latin Americans couldn't be trusted to manage their own affairs and required supervision by the United States, then governed exclusively by white men. Throughout the 20th century, U.S. political and commercial interests came to be elevated over the rights of the people south of the border to self-determination, thus allowing American business interests to exploit the region's natural resources through alliances with local elites and military dictatorships, backed by U.S. aid and, if necessary, overt or covert intervention (i).

By the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the massive inequality and oppression resulting from such arrangements had led to popular uprisings throughout the region; in response, governments unleashed reigns of brutal violence against entire populations, leading to the first waves of migration from NTCs the North. The devastating armed conflicts of the early 1980s, themselves significantly abetted by U.S. aid and cold war strategic interest in the region, wreaked havoc on rural and urban communities alike. Through state-sponsored violence-undertaken by military and paramilitary death squads-anyone deemed subversive could be "disappeared" or murdered, and entire communities were destroyed, deeply impacting both local economies and the social fabric, and leading to the first mass displacements to the United States. Through this historical lens, scholars have argued that both current and previous waves of migration from Central America thus reflect the inevitable "harvest" from seeds sewn by U.S. policy that long treated the region as part of its own informal empire (ii).

Although smaller numbers of educated, urban Central American immigrants had been arriving in the United States since the 1970s, the first significant waves of wartime refugees came in the mid-1980s, settling in communities across the United States where they could find jobs and faith-based or social support. By the mid-1990s, the huge demand created by American industries for cheap, exploitable labor, combined with the lingering aftermaths of war, lured increasing numbers of migrants to work in agricultural, meat processing, service, domestic, and industrial jobs across the country.

Sadly, in part because the United States had supported the brutal military regimes from which most fled, the asylum acceptance rate for refugees arriving in the United States from NTCs was close to zero, hovering around 2% during the first decade or so of migration. Nonetheless, thousands of border crossers were granted temporary work visas as they awaited their asylum hearings, giving rise to the famous asylum backlog that today exceeds a million cases. Most others, who were too poor and unskilled to qualify for legal immigration routes, lived in the in the shadows without legal documentation, many working two or three jobs to survive and send remittances back to their devastated communities. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the Central American immigrant population tripled between 1980 and 1990, and nearly half of today's 3.5 million Central American immigrants arrived before 2000.

The immediate causes of migration have shifted over time, and differ somewhat between the three countries, but these highly disruptive events set the stage for continuing patterns of displacement to this day. The residues of war-deep inequality, political instability, corruption, a lack of jobs, and new forms of violence-have in many ways intensified in recent years.

Poverty in NTC countries remains extremely high. In Honduras, half of the population lives below the poverty line, and in Guatemala close to 80% of the indigenous population is poor. In many places, especially rural areas, there is a concerted lack of jobs, poor access to education, health and nutrition, and very little sustained investment by the state in infrastructure or services by governments-all factors which have been exacerbated by pandemic lockdowns. In some areas of Honduras and Guatemala, the expansion of global megaprojects such as mining, hydroelectric plants, and other extractive industries, rather than creating jobs, has often resulted in environmental depletion or contamination, the destruction of subsistence farming, growing local impoverishment. In recent years, climate change and erratic weather-including hurricanes, draughts, and volcano eruptions-have been another major force behind migrations from this region. In some areas such as the "dry corridor" that runs through these countries, shifting weather patterns have led to starvation and extreme desperation among parents unable to feed their children or foresee local solutions. In the past year alone, damage caused by Hurricanes Eta and Iota, in tandem with the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to massive increases in hunger- in Guatemala, the number of households living in hunger has doubled, and in Honduras it has increased by more than 50% since the onset of the pandemic.

Another major driver of Central American migration in recent years has been the significant social violence that characterizes daily life. Violent gangs such as the Mara Salvatrucha and Calle 18 target poor, vulnerable community members, and seeking to recruit, extort or otherwise intimidate youth and their families. The mass deportations from the United States of the past several decades stimulated or exacerbated gang violence, as early young male deportees imported U.S.-developed gang organizational structures in the region, and subsequent waves of deportees become easy targets or recruits, thus often seeking to flee again to the United States. More recent government crack-downs on gangs in El Salvador have gone hand in hand with increasingly autocratic behavior by the country's president Nayib Bukele, creating growing concerns among human rights advocates.

One of the concerns that human rights advocates have about the region is that women and young girls in Central America are especially vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation; the NTCs have some of the highest femicide rates in the world. In addition, organized and violent criminal networks and clandestine security apparatuses-often connected to wartime intelligence and military structures-are involved in the trafficking of drugs, people, and contraband throughout the region. Parallel to this violence is the entrenched corruption that characterizes political, judicial, military, and business sectors in all three countries; internationally backed anti-corruption missions in Guatemala and Honduras have met with resistance from powerful political elites in recent years.

The combination of these societal failures and environmental factors has led to a situation of despair among many Central Americans who simply cannot find safety or livelihoods for their families; children and youth in particular are extremely vulnerable in such environments. It is no coincidence that the quest for family reunification among children of migrants is, along with the availability of jobs and some degree of safety, one of the main "pull factors" drawing so many to the United States in recent years.
CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRANTS ARE IMPORTANT TO U.S. SOCIETY
Lost in all the news stories about these current day border crossers, however, is the fact that vibrant Central American communities have for decades been settling successfully all over the United States, from the traditionally Latino states of Florida, Texas, and California to communities in New York, New England, and the Washington, DC area to southeastern states such as the Carolinas and Georgia and the meatpacking and agricultural communities of the Midwest. Of the roughly 3.5 million Central Americans in the United States, 40% are Salvadoran, 27% are Guatemalan, and 19% are Honduran. Over the past decades, some have been able to obtain lawful status through different means-through the TPS or DACA programs, through successful asylum claims, and many through family reunification-though many also remain undocumented or have been deported, often leaving their children and families in a precarious economic and social position.

As a group, Central American migrants have nonetheless sought to integrate to U.S. society as other immigrant groups have, and for many the economic and educational strides made in just one generation have been striking. For many, however, pre-migration stories that include poverty, violence, trauma, and low educational attainment, coupled with undocumented status, discrimination, and language barriers in the United States, have contributed to a challenging integration experience. Given their often marginalized situations back home, Central American migrants in the United States tend to have lower educational attainment, English language proficiency, and incomes than other immigrants. They also, however, participate in the U.S. labor force at a higher rate than other adults in the United States.

Central American migrants have also been a central force behind workers' rights campaigns and union organization in migrant-dominated industries. It is worth highlighting the fact that "unskilled" (and often undocumented) Central American workers-the majority of whom perform work laboring in fields, processing food, attending to the sick and elderly, have been recast as "essential workers" during the pandemic, underscoring the unjust long-term exclusion of this population from our society. The children of these migrants, when given the proper educational and social supports, have also been able to surmount enormous challenges; one study, for example, found that the children of Central American immigrants, while having lower math and reading skills than other Latino students, show the greatest achievement gains in early childhood.

As President Biden and Kamala Harris seek to work with NTC governments to curb migration, it is thus important to remember that Central Americans have long been an essential, hard laboring part of our American population, not a threatening mass of "otherness" at the border. Developing a humane, fair and comprehensive regional framework to address current migrations from this region will necessitate a thoughtful revamping of the U.S. asylum system, expanded access to other lawful immigration avenues, and targeted aid to NTC countries that addresses both the extreme insecurity of citizens and the corruption and militarization at the highest of levels. The Biden administration, which has already removed a number of damaging Trump-era asylum policies, also aims to invest $4 billion in such regional aid. As experts suggest, however, if this approach is to be successful it cannot replicate the failed approach of the previous Alliance for Prosperity, an aid package harshly criticized for supporting a centralized, security-based approach that ultimately failed to decrease migration. Instead, such in-country support must be negotiated and resolved with strong input from multiple sectors of civil society within NTC countries (including national authorities, the private sector, churches, mayor, and community organizations). In order to produce viable, humane solutions and policies, the historical, lived experiences of Central Americans uprooted by wars, poverty, and other forms of dislocation must be placed at the center of such efforts.

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i See generally, Walter LeFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, W. W. Norton and Company, 1993.

ii Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, Penguin Books, Revised Edition 2011.

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Vice President Kamala Harris's recent trip to Guatemala to meet with that country's political leaders was one of several recent initiatives undertaken by the Biden administration to address the root causes of migration from the Northern Triangle Countries (NTCs) of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to the United States-the nations driving what has come to be known as the U.S.

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Crisis at the border? Anthropologist looks at Central American migration

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An overview of the last 40 years of Central American migration to the US shows a system far more complicated than what’s often presented in the news.

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National Guard troops are arresting migrants in Texas. Critics say they’re not qualified to do it

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott continues to ramp up his controversial border security initiative. The state has sent troopers and National Guard members to the U.S./Mexico border to arrest migrants.

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Central American migration: Facts, FAQs, and how to help

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Here are basic facts and FAQs about Central America migration, how World Vision addresses root causes of poverty there, and how you can help.

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As new border wall construction rips through some of the most biologically diverse desert lands in North America, it is putting nearly 100 endangered species at increased risk. "I think many people still don't realize that the border wall-in addition to being a despicable racist symbol of Trump's hateful border policies-also will wipe some species off the face of the planet and have irreversible environmental impacts, changing these places forever," says Laiken Jordahl, borderlands campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity. Jordahl has traveled the extent of the US-Mexico borderlands advocating against border wall construction and routinely posts updates on social media about the topic.

Before the Trump administration came to power in 2017, there were already approximately 650 miles of barriers in place along the roughly 2,000-mile-long border. While some Democratic Party leaders have sought to downplay the extent of border wall construction, apparently in an attempt to snatch away from Trump one of his main campaign pledges, the ongoing construction does present a new threat to desert ecosystems, Jordahl says. "DHS is replacing tiny vehicle barriers-which wildlife and water could pass through with total ease-with a massive solid wall that will stop every single species of wildlife larger than a pocket mouse in its tracks."

The Trump administration has already put in place 119 miles of new border fortifications and has plans for a total of 576 miles of wall-450 of which it expects to have completed by the end of this year -using over $11 billion in taxpayer money. The administration has now notified Congress that it is diverting another $3.8 billion from the Pentagon budget in order to wall off hundreds of more miles, a move that critics say is unconstitutional. (The Sierra Club is the lead plaintiff in a suit challenging the constitutionality of the border wall funding.)

To those unfamiliar with the borderlands of the Southwest, mention of the region may conjure images of a vast desert wasteland. In reality, the US-Mexico borderlands are some of the most biodiverse wildlands in North America.

Before | Photo courtesy of Laiken Jordahl, Center for Biological Diversity

After | Photo courtesy of Laiken Jordahl, Center for Biological Diversity

Across most of the United States, such landscapes and the endangered and threatened species living within them would be protected under federal and state regulations. But using the powers available to it under a post-9/11 security law called the Real ID Act, the Trump administration has waived dozens of critical environmental safeguards along the border, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. That has left public interest watchdog groups with few legal opportunities to challenge the administration's activities.

Here is a short list of some of the species that are being harmed or whose habitats are being fragmented as the Trump administration bulldozes the desert.
Saguaro Cactus
Jordahl has witnessed the destruction firsthand in Organ Pipe National Monument, parts of which are being razed to build a 30-foot-high wall in spite of the area's status as federally designated wilderness. The Border Patrol and its contractors have bulldozed some 30 miles along the southern end of the park, and in the process have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of saguaro cacti, a signature plant of the Sonoran Desert. "Saguaros are being destroyed, chopped up like firewood, and discarded into trash heaps-all on sacred lands of the Tohono O'odham who actively use the area for ceremonial purposes," Jordahl says. One site in the national monument-Monument Hill, a sacred burial site of the Tohono O'odham people-is being blown up to make way for the border wall.

Under Arizona law, if someone is found guilty of damaging or cutting down a saguaro, they could face felony charges and up to a 25-year prison sentence. Now, the Trump administration is literally bulldozing them in a national monument. "We're watching the destruction of a national treasure," Jordahl says. "It's heartbreaking."

Photo courtesy of Laiken Jordahl, Center for Biological Diversity
Mexican Gray Wolf
A subspecies of the gray wolf, the Mexican gray wolf is the southernmost wolf in North America, the smallest of its species (ranging from 50 to 80 pounds) and also among the most endangered. Historically, the predator roamed throughout the borderlands of southwestern US and into northern Mexico. Today, the core of the US population straddles the border between New Mexico and Arizona, with many finding homes in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico.

In the late 1970s, under a binational effort by the US and Mexico to save the species, seven Mexican gray wolves were captured and bred in captivity. Today, all living Mexican gray wolves are descended from those seven-putting the species at risk of a genetic bottleneck. The population of wild Mexican gray wolves in the United States currently totals 131, while the population in Mexico is around 20 to 30, says Maggie Howell of the Wolf Conservation Center. While the populations of wild wolves may be the largest it has ever been since its reintroduction in the late 1990s, it's also significantly inbred.

As border wall construction pushes forward, wolf populations are at risk of being fragmented, thus reducing the chances that the subspecies may recover a healthy genetic diversity. "And the larger [the population] gets, the harder it will be to perform a genetic rescue to the wild population-which is basically all brothers and sisters now," she adds.

Biologists say it is imperative for the wolves' survival that the subpopulations in the United States and Mexico expand and are able to cross the US-Mexico border to breed with each other. In 2016, conservationists' dreams of uniting these two populations seemed imminent when a wolf from the Mexico subpopulation ventured across the border into the United States, where he remained for a few days before returning to Mexico. Just a year later, in 2017, a female wolf crossed the border as well. "What these wolves did-and these are just the wolves we know about-is proof there is hope to connect these two subpopulations," Howell says.

Then came the new border wall construction. "Now any wolves migrating north from Mexico or south from the US will find an impenetrable wall in their path," Jordahl says. "They've already completed a huge amount of border wall in New Mexico, and we're seeing it cut off all possible migratory paths for the wolf there, save a few high-elevation corridors in the boot heel."

"The fact that something everybody in the recovery of Mexican gray wolves is working toward is now literally being blocked off. . . . I'm feeling the devastation to this subspecies," Howell says. "We are blocking off a chance for these animals to one day be a self-sustaining, healthy, recovered population."

Photo courtesy of Wolf Conservation Center

Jaguar
Elsewhere along the border roams the jaguar, the spotted big cat that is the third-largest cat in the world and the largest one native to North America. Jaguars are typically found all the way from the Brazilian Amazon through to their northernmost reaches of the sky islands of Arizona and New Mexico, where conservationists are working to restore the jaguar to its traditional territory. They are listed as endangered and protected in both the United States and Mexico, and one of the main jaguar recovery goals is to allow the species to roam between the two countries. At least seven jaguars have been documented in Arizona within the past 20 years-three of them in just the past several years. But, just as with the Mexican gray wolf, border wall construction threatens to stall the species recovery.

Arizona canyons, riparian corridors, and rivers crossing the border are used by jaguars, says Sergio Avila, a big cat wildlife biologist who now works for the Sierra Club. It was on sky islands outside of Tucson, Arizona, where El Jefe-the most publicized jaguar in the United States-was frequently photographed. There have been other sightings of jaguars just north of the border in the Huachuca and Dos Cabezas Mountains, and Avila himself has photographed jaguars about 35 miles southeast of Nogales on the southern side of the border.

"All these little dots on the map basically let you see that, one, jaguars are using the sky islands," Avila says. "Two, they're moving back and forth from the border. And three, any construction and any activities of law enforcement along that region of the border would definitely impact the movements of jaguars."

Avila is quick to note that border militarization's impacts on jaguars and other wildlife go beyond the physical wall. Animals are also impacted by the associated truck traffic, cranes, and machines used to build that wall-as well as the helicopters, roads, patrols, checkpoints, lights, and generators used in militarizing the southern border. "Without ever getting to see the border wall, the jaguars would not use those areas anymore because of all the movement before, during, and after construction," Avila says. "This all amounts to destruction of public lands and is happening in places that jaguars could use or have used."

US Fish and Wildlife Service Southwest Region
Ocelot
The Tamaulipan thornscrub of the Rio Grande Valley is the native habitat of the ocelot-a cinnamon-colored, spotted cat that weighs around 30 pounds and is sometimes referred to as the "dwarf leopard." Biologists estimate that there are a scant 50 ocelots left in the United States. Their recovery is complicated by the fact that less than 1 percent of the species' native habitat remains intact within South Texas, and border wall construction threatens to destroy even more. As construction continues through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge-a constellation of nearly 150 wildlife refuge tracts connecting pockets of wildlife in the valley-the opportunities for the ocelots in Texas to connect and breed with the populations in Mexico are becoming slimmer.

"This is a death sentence because they have nowhere to go," Avila says. "They have no connections, no genetic inter-breeding, and will be impacted by habitat destruction."

In addition to sightings in Texas, five ocelot s have been spotted in Arizona since 2009. Researchers believe they came from a population located just south of the border in the Mexican state of Sonora. That is where, in the early 2000s, Avila and other researchers were granted permission by a private ranch to set up cameras to photograph jaguars-which they did successfully several years later. But the cameras also captured footage of another protected species: the ocelot. This "made the rancher's heart melt," Avila recalls. "It made him commit directly to conservation. He expressed his love for this species, and in that moment he saw the photograph, he said, 'I'm going to remove all the cattle I have in that canyon, because from now on this canyon will be the 'Canyon of the Ocelot.'" The ranch was eventually designated as a protected national area in Mexico.

Avila's team identified 18 different ocelots over eight years. Most important, the team documented photos of kittens, proving that there were both males and females in the area-the northernmost known wild breeding population of ocelots. This research led to a critical addition to the recovery plan for ocelots, which originally did not consider the Arizona-Sonoran subpopulation of ocelots.

Last year, however, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans for a 26-mile stretch of border wall just north of this ocelot population. While those plans were put on hold due to insufficient funds, Trump's recent victory in securing $7 billion for border wall construction may put those plans back into action.

As with other species, the road construction, Border Patrol traffic, lighting, noise, and air pollution that comes with border militarization makes life more difficult for ocelots. "All of these things combined create impacts far beyond the physical footprint of the wall," says ocelot biologist Jessica Moreno. "Ocelots are very sensitive to those kinds of disturbances, so they would not even try to cross. So a wall hampers all of our investments in protecting land on both sides for the recovery of the ocelot in Arizona."

Photo courtesy of Jim Rorabaugh
Peninsular Bighorn Sheep
Inhabiting dry and rocky desert slopes, canyons, and washes ranging from the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa Mountains of California all the way south to Baja California, Mexico, the endangered peninsular bighorn sheep finds itself under threat from a combination of border wall construction and other development in its core habitat. This development threatens to further fragment habitat connectivity and isolate the remnants of the species from each other. The San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation and Research is conducting research exploring cross-border connectivity between peninsular bighorn sheep populations, and its 2012 population survey showed a much larger population of bighorns just south of the border than had been expected.

During the past two centuries, this subspecies of bighorn sheep has suffered from habitat loss, disease, and overhunting. By the 1990s, its population dipped to as low as 276 animals, and it was placed on the endangered species list in 1998. While the population has since rebounded in the United States and is recovering in Mexico, careful management of the species is needed to continue the recovery. "We're at a stage where there are around 800 peninsular bighorn [in the US], and that's been a slow process getting back," says Jim DeForge, executive director of the Bighorn Institute. "That number has been going up and down."

Connectivity across landscapes is vital for the peninsular bighorn sheep to flourish, according to a cross-border collaborative study between the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation and Research and the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. The study determined the species has retained a "substantial genetic variation" but that border wall construction or further development along the border "could have severe consequences" on the species' demographics and genetic diversity as a whole and increase the extinction risk of the subpopulation spanning the border.

Photo courtesy of Bighorn Institute
Aquatic Species
Not only is the border wall construction bulldozing protected flora, but it also threatens desert aquifers like the one feeding Organ Pipe National Monument's Quitobaquito Springs. Some environmental researchers and activists say that the DHS's massive groundwater withdrawals for concrete mixing is reckless and threatens this unique oasis.

Quitobaquito Springs is the only habitat in the world of the Quitobaquito pumpfish and one of just two habitats of the Sonoyta mud turtle. Border wall contractors are extracting water from the aquifer that feeds the springs; and while no one knows exactly how much, some estimates project that as much as 50 million gallons of groundwater may be required for border wall construction on the Arizona border.

Several hundred miles east of Organ Pipe, similar rare aquatic resources at the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge are also in peril. There, DHS is drawing water from aquifers that are the sources of aquatic habitats called c ié negas -a type of desert wetland. The San Bernardino ciénegas are home to four endangered species of Yaqui fish: the topminnow, catfish, slider, and chub, which live nowhere else in the United States. "We could see these habitats-the entire habitats for all of the Yaqui fish-wiped off the face of the map in the next year or number of months," Jordahl from the Center for Biological Diversity says. "It's so heartbreaking to see them sucking up this groundwater-a nonrenewable resource in the desert . . . much of which dates back to the Ice Age . . . and which would never be allowed if it wasn't for the waiver of the Endangered Species Act. Giant tanker trucks fill up at the wells all day long, taking out 112,000 gallons of water each shift."

"They don't have to suck the entire aquifer dry to damage the springs," Jordahl adds. Just by dropping the water table by a foot or two, water flow to the springs may stop or slow, in the process destroying the ciénegas. This would not only mean death for the endangered aquatic species but would also jeopardize all species that depend on the water there, including the endangered Chiricahua leopard frog, endangered northern Mexican garter snake, protected desert tortoises, as well as other birds and mammals that drink from these pools.

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Endangered Species Are Casualties of Trump's Border Wall

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As new border wall construction rips through some of the most biologically diverse desert lands in North America, it is putting nearly 100 endangered species at increased risk.

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What lures butterflies to a certain spot in their migration? 

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What lures butterflies to a certain spot in their migration? 

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I think that butterflies move because of the weather. For example, I think they move away from the cold.

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This map was created in collaboration with the Center for Global Environmental Education at Hamline University with generous support from U.S. Forest Service - International Programs, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Missouri Department of Conservation.
Eastern Monarchs

Decreasing day length and temperatures, along with aging milkweed and fewer nectar sources trigger a change in monarchs; this change signifies the beginning of the migratory generation. Unlike summer generations that live for two to six weeks as adults, adults in the migratory generation can live for up to nine months. Most monarch butterflies that emerge after about mid August in the eastern U.S. enter reproductive diapause (do not reproduce) and begin to migrate south in search of the overwintering grounds where they have never been before. From across the eastern U.S. and southern Canada, monarchs funnel toward Mexico. Along the way, they find refuge in stopover sites with abundant nectar sources and shelter from harsh weather. Upon reaching their destination in central Mexico beginning in early November, monarchs aggregate in oyamel fir trees on south-southwest facing mountain slopes. These locations provide cool temperatures, water, and adequate shelter to protect them from predators and allow them to conserve enough energy to survive winter. In March, this generation begins the journey north into Texas and southern states, laying eggs and nectaring as they migrate and breed. The first generation offspring from the overwintering population continue the journey from the southern U.S. to recolonize the eastern breeding grounds, migrating north through the central latitudes in approximately late April through May. Second and third generations populate the breeding grounds throughout the summer. It is generally the fourth generation that begins where we started this paragraph, migrating through the central and southern U.S. and northern Mexico to the wintering sites in central Mexico.

Western Monarchs

In any given year, adult monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains leave overwintering sites along the California coast (with a small number of sites in Baja California and Arizona) in February and March and head inland in search of milkweed on which to deposit their eggs. Once first-generation monarch eggs reach adulthood, they disperse east across the Central Valley and north across most of the western states. Second- and third-generation monarchs live and die throughout spring and summer, generally staying in the same areas where they hatched. The fourth generation (along with late bloomers from the third generation) emerges in late summer to fall. This migratory generation lives 6-9 months, compared to the 2-5 weeks of earlier generations. Western migratory monarchs also differ biologically from non-migratory generations; they are in a state of reproductive diapause, meaning their reproductive organs do not mature until later in the adult stage (after winter). Instead of looking for milkweed, fourth-generation western monarchs require nectar to build lipid reserves as they migrate south and west to the overwintering sites along the California coast (also in Baja California and Arizona), arriving around late October. Once they arrive, they roost for the winter in eucalyptus, Monterey cypress, Monterey pine, and other trees, sometimes in aggregations of thousands of individuals. In February and March, reproductive diapause ends and the annual cycle starts anew. Milkweed and nectar plant availability throughout the spring, summer, and fall will benefit western monarchs. In areas of the desert southwest, monarchs use nectar and milkweed plants throughout much of the year. For western monarch information and resources, visit the Western Monarchs category of our Downloads and Links page.

How do monarchs find the overwintering sites?

Orientation is not well understood in insects. In monarchs, orientation is especially mysterious. How do millions of monarchs start their southbound journey from all over eastern and central North America and end up in a very small area in the mountains of central Mexico? How do western monarchs find the same overwintering groves year after year? We know that they do not learn the route from their parents since only about every fourth to fifth generation of North American monarch migrates. Therefore, it is certain that monarchs rely on their instincts rather than learning to find overwintering sites. What kind of instincts might they rely on? Other animals use celestial cues (the sun, moon, or stars), the earth's magnetic field, landmarks (mountain ranges or bodies of water), polarized light, infra-red energy perception, or some combination of these cues. Of these, the first two are considered to be the most likely cues that monarchs use, and consequently have been studied the most.

Sun Compass: Since monarchs migrate during the day, the sun is the celestial cue most likely to be useful in pointing the way to the overwintering sites. This proposed mechanism is called a sun compass. Monarchs may use the angle of the sun along the horizon in combination with an internal body clock (like a circadian rhythm) to maintain a southwesterly flight path. The way this would work is illustrated below. For example, if a monarch's internal clock reads 10:00 AM, then the monarch will fly to the west of the sun to maintain a southern flight direction. When the monarch's internal clock reads noon (12:00 PM), the monarch's instincts tell it to fly straight toward the sun, while later in the day the monarch's instincts tell it to fly to the east of the sun.

However, this would have to be combined with the use of some other kind of cue. If all the monarchs in eastern and central North America maintained a southwesterly flight, they could never all end up in the same place. It has been proposed that mountain ranges are important landmarks used by monarchs during their migration. For example, when eastern monarchs encounter a mountain range, their instincts might tell them to turn south and follow the mountain range. This kind of instinct would serve to funnel monarchs from the entire eastern half of North America to a fairly small region in the mountains of central Mexico.

Magnetic Compass: Scientists have suggested that monarchs may use a magnetic compass to orient, possibly in addition to a sun compass or as a "back-up" orientation guide on cloudy days when they cannot see the sun. Studies of migratory birds have indicated that they register the angle made by the earth's magnetic field and the surface of the earth. These angles point south in the Northern Hemisphere and north in the Southern Hemisphere.

James Kanz (1977) conducted experiments to test the orientation of migratory monarchs held in cylindrical flight chambers. He reported that the monarchs flew in southwesterly directions on sunny days, but flew in random directions on cloudy days. He concluded that monarchs primarily use the sun to orient, and that magnetic orientation was unlikely, since the monarchs did not appear to be able to orient when they could not use the sun. However, Klaus Scmidt-Koenig (1985) reported conflicting evidence. He recorded the vanishing bearings (the direction in which a monarch disappears from sight) of wild, migratory monarchs, and found that even on cloudy days, most monarchs still flew in a southwesterly direction. Scientists attempted additional tests of magnetic orientation, but were not able to determine whether monarchs use the Earth's magnetic field to orient.

However, researchers from the Reppert Lab (2014) showed that migratory monarchs indeed possess a magnetic compass that aids in orienting migrants south towards their overwintering grounds during fall migration. Remarkably, the use of the magnetic compass requires short wave UV-light (previous magnetic compass experiments failed to account for light at this range). With UV-light being allowed to enter the flight simulator, eastern migratory monarchs consistently oriented themselves south. The light-sensitive magnetosensors reside in the adult monarch's antennae. While the expert consensus remains that the sun compass is the monarch's primary compass for navigation, the authors suggest migratory monarchs use the magnetic compass to augment their sun compass.

Genetics: Upon dispersal, the Central and South American, Atlantic, and Pacific populations lost the ability to migrate. This prompted researchers to identify the gene regions in North American monarchs that appeared highly differentiated from non-migratory populations. Kronforst et al. (2014) identified 536 genes significantly associated with migration. One single genomic segment appeared to be divergent in the non-migrating populations and was extremely different from the North American population. One gene, collagen IV alpha-1, showed high divergence between migrating and non-migrating populations. Collagen IV alpha-1 is an important gene for muscle function, and divergence of this gene implicates selection for different flight muscles between migrating and non-migrating populations. Surprisingly, Collagen IV alpha-1 was down regulated in migratory monarchs, perhaps preparing them for lengthy flight. Furthermore, migrating monarchs had low metabolic rates compared to non-migrants as a consequence of flight muscle performance, lowering energy expenditure in migrating monarchs muscles. This evidence led researchers to conclude that changes in muscle function afforded migrating monarchs the ability to fly farther and use their energy more efficiently. Dr. Kronforst used the analogy of a marathon runner vs. a sprinter, "Migrating butterflies are essentially endurance athletes, while others are sprinters."

Overwintering Biology

Where do the monarchs go?

It is thought that monarchs were originally tropical butterflies that underwent range expansion. Scientists are not sure how long the monarch's spectacular annual migration to Mexico has been occurring; it may be as old as 10,000 years (when the glaciers last retreated from North America) or as young as a few centuries. The earliest reports of overwintering clusters of monarchs in the United States were from California in the 1860s.

Monarch overwintering sites in Mexico and along the California coast have particular characteristics that enable monarch survival. These characteristics are important because they provide the monarch with the right overwintering conditions. Trees on which to cluster are one of the most important elements of the sites. The climate and the entire surrounding area are also important. Nearby trees, streams, underbrush, and fog or clouds all form an intricate natural ecosystem comprising the monarchs' winter habitat. Monarchs need a cool place to roost so that they don't use up their energy reserves as quickly. They also need to be protected from snow and winds. The surrounding trees serve as a buffer to the winds and snow.

Although monarchs are found in many areas of the world, the most spectacular migration occurs in North America.

Monarchs that spend the summer breeding season in eastern North America (including states and provinces east of the Rocky Mountains: central and eastern Canada, midwestern and eastern United States) migrate to the Transvolcanic mountains of central Mexico. Many millions of monarchs from these regions fly south to Mexico each fall. Their flight pattern is shaped like a cone as they come together and pass over the state of Texas on their way south. In massive butterfly clouds, they sweep up into the mountain ranges of central Mexico. Indigenous Mexican cultures of the Transvolcanic Range have welcomed the monarch migration since time immemorial; in 1975 scientists from Canada and the U.S. recorded the overwintering sites for the first time.

In Mexico, monarchs roost in oyamel fir forests, which occur in a very small mountainous area in central Mexico. Overwintering sites are about 3000 meters (almost 2 miles) above sea level and are on steep, southwest-facing slopes. Because monarchs need water for moisture, the fog and clouds in this mountainous region provide another important element for the winter survival of the monarchs. The butterflies choose spots that are close to, but not quite, freezing. They cluster together, covering whole tree trunks and branches, and cling to fir and pine needles. The tall trees make a thick canopy over their heads. Protective trees and bushes soften the wind and shield the butterflies from the occasional snow, rain, or hail. Each of the above elements is important to the butterflies, making up the monarch habitat - trees in which to roost, other trees and shrubs to protect them, the cool air, and the presence of water.

Monarchs do not reproduce until the spring, so they do not rely on milkweed during this time. They do seek out water and drink nectar from flowers in the overwintering sites. These two documents list nectar plants identified within the overwintering reserves in Mexico (documents are in Spanish): PLANTAS de la Reserva de la Biosfera Mariposa Monarca, PLANTAS.

Monarchs that spend the summer breeding season in western North America (including states west of the Rocky Mountains: Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, and Montana) migrate to specific overwintering groves along the California coast roughly between Mendocino County in the north, and San Diego County in the South. Here, monarchs roost in eucalyptus trees, Monterey pines, and Monterey cypresses that are located in bays sheltered from wind, or farther inland where they're protected from storms. There are over 400 historic overwintering aggregations in California in addition to many temporary clusters. Scientists estimate that the California monarchs make up about 5% of the overall worldwide monarch population. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has mapped out where to see congregations of overwintering monarchs in California here.

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Each year, over the course of a few generations, monarchs make an incredible journey across North America to overwintering sites in Mexico and California.

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Climate warming changes bird migration timing and body size - The Wildlife Society

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Climate change has likely caused migratory birds' bodies to get smaller and their wings to get longer over the years, and the timing of their migrations has shifted substantially. Researchers...

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If you have ever wondered what the most common crimes in Texas are, you're not alone. Every state has their own set of crime statistics. In Texas, they vary with the population of each area. Texas is the second largest state in the US, so it has everything from vast rural areas to the fourth largest city in the country. So the greater the city's population, the higher the crime rate. The Texas cities with the highest crime rates include:

The Texas Department of Public Safety provides crime reports and statistics for each year, which allows residents to keep up with the most common crimes. When people are aware of the most common crimes being committed in their state, they can take measures to protect themselves.

Here are some of the most common crimes being committed in the State of Texas.

#1: Drugs

While drug-related offenses are common in every state, it's a major problem in Texas. Drug offenses make up the majority of Texas arrests, which includes possession. This is no surprise when you consider the size of the state itself, and it should be no surprise that, like most states, drug crimes are taken seriously in Texas. There are certain types of drugs that are illegal to use, manufacture, share, distribute, sell, or possess. Some of them include but may not be limited to:

Controlled Prescription Drugs (CPD).

Heroin.

Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.

Cocaine.

Methamphetamines.

Marijuana.

New psychoactive substances (NPS).

Both the State of Texas and the federal government believe that the same substances go against the interests of the public and need to be categorized as "controlled substances."

#2: Theft

Theft is the second most common crime in Texas. In the last year alone, there were 518,000 theft-related arrests in the State of Texas. If you have been accused of theft in the State of Texas, you might be able to use the following defenses:

Lack of intent - You took the item without intending to steal it. You might have returned a borrowed item, regardless of how aggravating it might be for the owner.

Mistake of fact - The item was thought to have been stolen when it really wasn't.

Age - While being a minor is not a complete defense, it may be a way to get a less severe penalty.

Be sure to speak to a qualified attorney for more information.

#3: Aggravated Assault

About 118,000 people were arrested for this crime in the State of Texas, and this number includes simple assault as well. Someone commits an act of assault it he or she:

Intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly causes bodily injury to someone else (which can include the person's spouse).

Intentionally or knowingly threatens someone else with bodily injury, which can include the person's spouse.

Intentionally or knowingly makes physical contact with someone else when he or she knows or should reasonably believe that the other person will consider the contact offensive or provocative.

Feel free to speak to qualified attorney for more information.

#4: Burglary

Anyone who illegally breaks into something is committing the crime of burglary. This can include a machine, a car, or a house. In the State of Texas, over 100,000 individuals are arrested every single year for committing burglary. Examples of this crime include but may not be limited to:

Staying past your permitted time in a private or public building with the intention of committing an act of assault.

Hiding inside a retail store after hours with the intention of committing an act of theft.

Entering a rail car with the intention of commit theft.

Breaking into a coin collection machine in an attempt to steal money.

Using a coat hanger to unlock a car door with the intention of stealing a purse.

Entering a recreational vehicle to assault someone inside.

Feel free to speak to a qualified attorney for more information.

#5: Robbery

Unlike burglary, robbery is considered a violent crime because it involves direct contact with the victim (which will typically lead to injury). In 2017, over 32,000 people were arrested for robbery in the State of Texas. Not only is it one of the most common Texas crimes, it's also extremely dangerous to the victim. You should always be alert when you're walking alone, and you should keep a phone on you at all times.

If you have been charged with any of these crimes, be sure to speak to someone at Gale Law Group. We're a criminal defense attorney in Corpus Christi that will fight for you. So if you want to increase your chances of coming up with a solid defense, get in touch with us today!

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Top 5 Crimes Committed in the State of Texas - Gale Law Group

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Top 5 Crimes Committed in the State of Texas - The Texas Department of Public Safety provides crime reports and statistics for each year, which allows residents to keep up with the most common crimes. When people are aware of the most common crimes being committed in their state, they can take measures to protect themselves.

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Each fall, millions of monarch butterflies leave their summer breeding grounds in the northeastern U.S. and Canada and travel upwards of 3,000 miles to reach overwintering grounds in southwestern Mexico.

But unlike birds or wildebeest that also embark on epic migrations, these individual butterflies will never return. ( See National Geographic's amazing photos of monarchs.)

Why won't they make it all the way back? How do they know where to go in the first place?

How Does Monarch Butterfly Migration Work?

As the days get shorter and the temperatures drop off, monarchs begin to abandon breeding and feeding territories in search of a safe place to spend the winter.

For monarchs, that overwintering ground is found high up on just a few mountains in central Mexico. Once there, the monarchs huddle together by the millions on the branches of oyamel fir trees.

These trees, also known as sacred firs, create a microclimate that protects the insects, says Pablo Jaramillo-López, a research scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

"The tree canopy and ecosystem provide a blanket effect for the monarchs, so the temperatures don't go too high or too low," says López.

After waiting out the winter, these individuals head part of the way back north to warmer climes such as Texas, where they mate and lay eggs on milkweed plants. In just a few days, the eggs hatch into brilliantly striped caterpillars of black, gold, and white. These monarch larvae consume vast amounts of milkweed before forming a chrysalis and transforming into adult butterflies. ( Read how the monarch's decline is linked to milkweed.)

At this point in the cycle, the new butterflies take to the skies again and fly another few hundred miles north before finding another patch of milkweed and repeating the process.

It might take the monarchs as many as four to five generations to complete the journey all the way back up to Canada, says Sarina Jepsen, who directs the endangered species program for the Xerces Society, an international nonprofit focused on invertebrate conservation.

Then, when fall rolls around again, the monarchs make use of air currents to wing all the way back to Mexico-a seemingly impossible feat for such a delicate-looking insect.

"Interestingly, the waves of monarchs heading north will complete their entire life cycles in just five to seven weeks each," saysJaramillo-López.

" But when fall rolls around again, a special 'super generation' of monarchs that can live up to eight months will make use of air currents to wing all the way back to Mexico-a seemingly impossible feat for such a delicate-looking insect."

"This makes the migrating monarchs so unique as they are the same species but for some reason live much longer."

Why Do Monarchs Migrate, and How Do They Know Where to Go?

This part is still very much up for debate, says Jepsen. But there are a couple of theories.

One explanation might be that when monarchs march north, they are essentially following the bloom of their primary food source-milkweed plants. And then when winter comes and those plants die back, the animals retreat to a place with conditions that protect them from the weather.

Another idea involves their immune systems. "Migration also allows monarchs to escape habitats where parasites have accumulated at the end of the summer," says Sonia Altizer, an ecologist at the University of Georgia. (Read: " Imperiled Monarch Butterflies Get $3.2 Million From U.S. Government.")

Altizer has found that adult butterflies infected with a protozoan parasite called Ophryocystis elektroscirrha, or OE, can't fly as well in lab tests and travel shorter distances in the wild. (Read m

"We think that migration weeds out the most heavily infected monarchs, removing them from the populations," says Altizer.

As for how the monarchs know where to go, a study published in 2016 suggests that the critters navigate based on their relative position to the sun. But scientists are still ironing out exactly how this works.

Why Are Monarch Butterflies Important?

While monarchs may seem small and insignificant, the creatures play a crucial role in the ecosystems they inhabit.

As adults, monarch butterflies visit countless numbers of wildflowers each year as they seek out nutrient-rich nectar. In doing so, the monarchs transfer pollen from one plant to another and assist in those species' reproduction. ( Learn the key to the monarch's long-distance migration.)

And even though monarch caterpillars and adults are poisonous to most predators, thanks to toxins they acquire from milkweed, some animals are still able to stomach them. Orioles and grosbeaks in particular make a feast of monarchs over the winter, and ants, wasps, flies, and spiders have been known to prey on the caterpillars when they get the chance.

Are Monarch Butterflies Endangered?

The short answer is no. Monarch butterflies are actually quite common across the world, with populations occurring as far away as North Africa and New Zealand.

However, the subspecies known as Danaus plexippus plexippus is the only one that performs the great North American migration-and these butterflies are increasingly under threat. (See " Monarch Butterflies Hit New Low; 'Worrisome' Trend.")

Jepsen says the Xerces Society has petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the migratory subspecies of monarchs as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. That finding is currently under review.

What Threats Do Migrating Monarchs Face?

Because migratory monarchs have such a wide range, they also have many threats. These include declining milkweed populations across their range in the U.S. and Canada, parasites and diseases like those in Altizer's research, and even a growing demand for avocados sourced from Mexico. ( Read more about the world's great migrations.)

The avocado problem is a tricky one, says Jaramillo-López, because the people who live near the monarch wintering grounds need good ways to make a living. Unfortunately, when native forests are replaced with avocado plantations, it can have a ripple effect on monarchs higher up in the mountains.

Mexico has designated almost 140,000 acres of forest as a protected area for wintering monarchs, but Jaramillo-López says much of this area is really just a buffer zone that prevents strong winds from damaging the core area where the monarchs congregate. So even if the area being razed for avocado cultivation is at a lower elevation than butterflies prefer, it can still affect the forests on which they rely.

According to Jepsen, people can also do damage to wild populations by trying to raise monarch eggs bought from commercial suppliers. There's very little oversight, she says, which means that even if you're trying to help monarchs, you might be inadvertently spreading disease. (See " How Your Backyard Can Save Butterflies.")

"The best thing you can do," says Jepsen, "is to provide habitat for monarchs and just let them do their thing."

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Each fall, millions of monarch butterflies leave their summer breeding grounds in the northeastern U.S. and Canada and travel upwards of 3,000 miles to reach overwintering grounds in southwestern Mexico. But unlike birds or wildebeest that also embark on epic migrations, these individual butterflies will never return.

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The Top 5 Reasons People Are Arrested in Texas - The Law Office of Eric Harron

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Every year, there are more than three-quarters of a million arrests made throughout Texas. While this includes violent and serious charges like human trafficking and manslaughter, most arrests are for non-violent crimes. The following are the five most common reasons people get arrested in Texas: #1. Drug Possession In 2014, [...]

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Out My Backdoor: Butterflies in Winter? | Department Of Natural Resources Division

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By Terry W. Johnson Backyards that harbor an abundance of wildlife are indeed special places. Regardless of the time of the year, they provide homeowners with limitless opportunities to watch the coming and going of an amazing array of wildlife. If you have such a yard, you might even see a butterfl…

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By Luisanna Carrillo-Rubio

Figure 1: Winged Migration

According to Hans Verolme, Director of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Global Climate Change Program, "birds have long been used as indicators of environmental change," and a recent global status report entitled Bird Species and Climate Change (2006) indicated that birds are "the quintessential 'canaries in the coal mine' when it comes to climate change." So it is of particular concern that, at present, the prognosis for bird species-whether they are migratory, mountain, island, wetland, Arctic, Antarctic or seabirds-is most dreadful. The report clearly assembles scientific evidence which demonstrates a " trend towards a major bird extinction from global warming."

The May, 2008, International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) assessment concluded that " climate change-and even some attempts to tackle it-are pushing one in eight species of birds towards extinction." In the past year alone, 26 of the 1,226 species on their "Red List" of threatened bird species became more endangered, while only 2 species improved in status.

The Bird Species and Climate Change (2006) report warns that extinction rates "could be as high as 38 per cent in Europe, and 72 per cent in northeastern Australia, if global warming exceeds 2ºC above pre-industrial levels (currently it is 0.8ºC above)." Unfortunately, the current approach to bird conservation which focuses on protecting specific and limited areas containing high bird diversity will inevitably fail, simply because climate change will force birds to shift into unprotected zones as they desperately try to cope with an ever-warming planet and the shifts this brings to their habitats. In the United States bird populations have also shrunk, and nearly a third of the bird species living in the eastern Midwest and Great Lakes areas could be lost. In other parts of the world, the situation is just as precarious, if not worse.

In the Australian north-eastern wet tropics, almost three-quarters of rainforest birds are at risk of disappearing. Elsewhere on that continent, increased severe droughts accompanied by forest fires have decimated the populations of Australian Mallee Emuwren ( Stipiturus mallee). Their numbers have now plummeted, and "the largest population now numbers just 100 and is constrained to a 100 square kilometre plot of land. The IUCN warns that a single forest fire could have dramatic consequences, and has listed the species as 'endangered." The plight of the Australian Mallee Emuwren is not unique. In fact, many regions on which birds depend may soon become unsuitable due to climate change; "Island and mountain birds may simply have nowhere to go," and changes may make it impossible for annual migrations to take place.

Figure 2: Arctic terns, whose total yearly migration can equal up to 30,000 miles-the longest among all animal species. Source

A 2007 article by Alister Doyle, "Migratory Birds and Whales Confused by Warming," revealed that "a warmer climate disrupts the biological clocks of migratory species including bats, dolphins, antelopes or turtles." These animals are now "the most visible warning signs [or] indicators signaling the dramatic changes to our ecosystems caused in part by climate change," scientists warn. In North America, "Spring migration is occurring earlier and fall migration later in many species. For example, 25 migratory bird species are arriving in Manitoba, Canada, earlier than they did 63 years ago." As changes between seasons continue to become less clear, many birds are mistiming their migratory pattern. These shifts make them quite vulnerable to heat waves, droughts or cold snaps.

Of particular concern is the fact that some bird populations are abandoning their migrations altogether. For instance, cranes are starting to spend the winter in Germany rather than fly south to Spain or Portugal." Birds exhibiting this behavior risk remaining in regions that can potentially be too cold for them to survive. In such cases, a single severe winter event could decimate entire populations.

Furthermore, migratory birds "are particularly vulnerable as they depend heavily upon separate breeding, wintering and stop-over sites. Changes to any one of the habitats can put them at risk." The report Bird Species and Climate Change points out that "climate change is pushing birds out of synchrony with key elements of their ecosystems." The fact that migratory birds are characteristically very prompt and sensitive responders to any fluctuations in climate leaves them particularly vulnerable. Species of birds that rely on limited areas for their breeding, to which they may travel very long distances, may be pushed out of existence in a large scale much sooner than previously anticipated, while some bird populations are already facing drastic reductions in their numbers. In fact, "Scientists have found declines of up to 90 per cent in some bird populations, as well as total and unprecedented reproductive failure in others."

With the increase in temperature in the Arctic region, for example, "forests could take over from tundra, complicating life for many birds that nest on the ground and have to fly from Africa to find sites with few predators. [While] Warmer weather could bring predators north." As climate changes, migratory birds or other endemic species may soon find themselves outnumbered by invasive ones.

Changes in seasonal temperatures and increases in global temperatures also affect the availability and proliferation of insects, which in turn are essential parts of the diets of many bird species. For instance, "Birds are sometimes hatching early in a warmer climate, but sometimes insect food can flourish even earlier. Pied Flycatcher birds in Europe, for instance, have suffered from a lack of caterpillars for their chicks."

Figure 3: A Whooping Crane-the tallest of all North American flying birds, Source
Hear Cranes Call in Unison Hear an Adult Crane Give a Warning Call
Take, for instance, the critically endangered Siberian Crane, a wetland migratory bird whose numbers worldwide are down to 3,000 individuals. The cranes breed in the Arctic confines of Russia and Siberia, and spend their winters in the mid or lower ranges of the Yangtze River.

Figure 4 Siberian Crane Migratory Route, from: http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/cranes/grusleuc.htm

Unfortunately, "this bird's Arctic tundra habitat is forecast to decline by 70 percent." The tundra where they breed is not the only climate region on which the cranes rely on that is now in jeopardy, as "decreased precipitation, coupled with more intense rainfall events, also negatively affects the crane in its habitat in China." Siberian Cranes have not been exempt to other climatic changes, since "Increasing drought due to higher temperatures is thought to be one factor that caused a subpopulation of Siberian Cranes, which once wintered in India's Keoladeo National Park, to shift out of the park and become locally extinct."

The Pied Flycatcher serves as another example of a bird species facing similar challenges. These long-distance migratory birds are changing the timing of their migrations in an effort to adapt to climate change. The problem with this measure to keep up with climate change and its impacts is that "the plants and animals they interact with do not shift at the same rate." In Europe, it has been observed that an earlier spring climax in insect numbers means that Pied Flycatchers "no longer arrive from Africa in time to match food peaks with peak demands of their nestlings." The species has seen as a result a 90 per cent decline in some of its European populations within the last two decades.

Other bird species have also seen their existence increasingly threatened. In Australia, for instance, desertification and temperature increase are contributing to eliminate the habitat of many different species. For example, "the habitat of the Golden Lowerbird is predicted to shrink by 97.5 per cent with a future warming of 3°C and a 10 percent decline in rainfall," and an increase beyond 3˚C would cause the bird to disappear entirely. Because the Golden Lowerbird occupies the cooler areas in Australia's more humid tropics in mountains enclosed by warmer regions, as temperatures rise, the habitat will continue to shrink.

In the United Kingdom, the North Sea saw an apian breeding collapse in the year 2004. The direct cause for this crash was a shortage of sandeels, a small fish essential to the diet of many birds, including the Hercules of all apian migrators: the Arctic Tern. This shortage of food was related to global warming, and according to the World Wildlife Fund Global Climate Change Program, " Warming ocean waters and major shifts in species that underpin the ocean food web are thought to be behind the major sandeel decline."

The Arctic Terns (see figure 2) demonstrate perfectly how susceptible migratory birds are to climate disruptions, especially since this is a bird whose annual journey round-trip totals between 22,000 and 30,000 miles. Since Arctic terns live up to 30 years, a single one of these 14-17 inches long, two-pound birds may travel during its lifetime more than 650,000 miles. Interestingly enough, Arctic terns see more daylight than any other creature on the planet, "since they are in both the Arctic and Antarctic during the periods of longest days."

Arctic Terns rely on the North Sea (see the map on figure 7) as a source of food in their long journeys. In the year 2004, the terns saw their habitual feeding stop unable to supply them with enough food. In fact, "no Arctic tern chicks were reared in the south of Shetland [archipelago in Northern Scotland] in 2004. And although hundreds of Arctic Terns arrived at the RSPB's [a wildlife reserve owned by BirdLife International, UK] Mousa reserve this spring, no young were fledged. All the large Arctic Tern colonies in Orkney [Northern Scotland] failed, and for the first time in living memory, none nested at the RSPB reserve on Papa Westray [also in Scotland]." The Terns were not alone in their plight: "The nearly 7,000 pairs of Great Skuas in the Shetlands [another species dependent on the North Sea for food] produced only a handful of chicks and starving adult birds ate their own young."

The collapse of fish productivity in the North Sea in the year 2004 has been called by scientists "a regime shift" because "rising sea temperatures have fundamentally changed the plankton mix to the detriment of sandeels," the fishes that are essential as part of the diet of the many birds that stop in the North Sea to feed, as reported by BirdLife International in a press release entitled " Seabirds in the North Sea: victims of climate change?" Sandeels also are essential to other links of the marine food chain, which means that other fish and bird species have started to see their numbers drop as well, such as mackerels, cod, or kittiwakes (a seabird). The 2004 collapse "was so severe that fishermen voluntarily shut down the fishery in the worst affected area" of the United Kingdom's North Sea. The Marine Policy Head of BirdLife International concluded that "We could be witnessing the single biggest change in the North Sea since it was formed 10,000 years ago."

Figure 6: The North Sea
So what?
We know that bird species are great indicators of climate change-the canary in the coal mine-and as such, they are extremely vulnerable to all the impacts of global warming, particularly the species that depend on food sources in their specific stops along the way during their yearly migrations. We also know that a very significant percentage of these-one in eight bird species, to be precise-are at risk due to a warmer climate. But, why are bird species important in order to keep the ecosystems worldwide healthy?

If we can picture a world in which there's no seed dispersal, pollination or pest control naturally done, then we'd be picturing a world devoid of bird species which do the planet an essential ecological service. In fact, studies done as to the cost of such services provided by nature to humanity (by insects, birds, plants) were estimated in a 1997 study to be 30 trillion dollars, according to Harvard University Professor Emeritus, E. O. Wilson (from the BBC Planet Earth series, "Saving Species" fragment).

In the case of migratory birds, if we consider their stopping to feed and breed in particular regions in perfect timing with the massive hatching of worms, or any other insect, we have a natural pest and parasite control in these winged pilgrims. And, at the same time, these birds may be essential to nourish other creatures in the same ecosystem, essential predators at a higher level of the food chain. The arrival of these birds to their breeding grounds, the eggs they produce and eventually their nestlings, are an essential source of food for small predators to feed on and to nourish their young. A disturbance in the population and arrival timing of migratory birds would entail problems for all predators that await this annual food bonanza.

The problems faced by bird populations worldwide, and especially by migratory birds that may be traveling up to tens of thousands of miles, mean that drastic changes in any single world region could push a wide variety of bird species out of existence. Human activity responsible for greenhouse emissions is eliminating at unprecedented rates all that too many species need to survive and to keep the ecosystems alive and healthy. Birds such as the Floreana Mockingbird ( Nesomimus trifasciatus) of the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador-now a critically endangered bird-is yet another casualty, among countless others. These birds live on two small islands, Champion and Gardner-by-Floreana, and its total population is now fewer than 60 individuals.

Unfortunately for all animal species the very few measures taken to counter global warming can actually be more damaging and make matters worse. The IUCN showed that "In Papua New Guinea, increased cultivation of the palm oil - a source of biofuel - has accelerated deforestation. This, in turn, poses a new threat to bird species including the New Britain Goshawk." In the words of Stuart Butchart, of BirdLife International, "Species are being hit by the double whammy of habitat loss and climate change [...] [and as] populations become fragmented the effect of climate change can have an even greater impact, leading to an increased risk of local extinctions." Sadly, within decades, the spectacular winged migrations; the singing of so many bird species, and the many ecological services apian species provide for the world and its various ecosystems may all cease to exist.

RESOURCES

Organizations:
http://www.savingcranes.org/ http://nationalzoo.si.edu/ConservationAndScience/MigratoryBirds/Research/Climate_Change/ http://www.birdlife.org/ http://www.nwf.org/birdsandglobalwarming/migratorybirds.cfm
Articles
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200611/s1788322.htm http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUKL0729128920070507 http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn13935-one-in-eight-bird-species-threatened-by-climate-change.html
Resources on Birds, World Wildlife Fund
http://www.panda.org/news_facts/newsroom/index.cfm?uNewsID=86460
Official Global Status Report: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/birdsclimatereportfinal.pdf

A summary can be found at:
http://assets.panda.org/downloads/wwfsummaryfinal.pdf

Additional Resources

*Dr. Terry L. Root and Stephen H. Schneider, who is also a Board Member of the Climate Institute, have published extensively on climate change and its impacts on wildlife and ecosystems.

Some of her published work along with her husband's on ecosystems and climate change impacts appears on her biographical page, at: http://cesp.stanford.edu/people/terrylroot/

*Article entitled "Do changes in climate patterns in wintering areas affect the timing of the spring arrival of trans-Saharan migrant birds?" by Dr. Terry L. Root is available at (abstract):
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2004.00875.x

* Climate Change: Overview and Implications for Wildlife, by Dr. Terry L. Root and Dr. Stephen H. Schneider is available at: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Overview(1-56).pdf

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By Luisanna Carrillo-Rubio Figure 1: Winged Migration According to Hans Verolme, Director of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Global Climate Change Program, "birds have long been used as indicators of environmental change," and a recent global status report entitled Bird Species and Climate Change (2006) indicated that birds are "the quintessential 'canaries in the coal mine' when it comes to climate change."

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During the campaign, it was easy to scoff at President Donald Trump's promise to build a "big, beautiful" concrete wall along the US-Mexico border. It sounded, well, preposterous.

But now the prospect of a border wall is quite real. Trump has requested $1.6 billion for fiscal year 2018 to build three segments totaling 74 miles. The Department of Homeland Security is planning to test the eight prototypes it built this summer in San Diego over the next 30 to 60 days.

There's a long debate over whether physical barriers on the border actually curb the illicit flow of people and drugs. The Border Patrol, which is backing Trump's plan, says they're a "vital tool." Migration experts say they're more symbolic than effective.

But what is undeniable is that the 654 miles of walls and fences already on the US-Mexico border have made a mess out of the environment there. They've cut off, isolated, and reduced populations of some of the rarest and most amazing animals in North America, like the jaguar and ocelot (also known as the dwarf jaguar). They've led to the creation of miles of roads through pristine wilderness areas. They've even exacerbated flooding, becoming dams when rivers have overflowed.

Now, DHS is eyeing unfenced areas in two Texas wildlife refuges that conservationists consider some of the most ecologically valuable areas on the border - home to armadillos and bobcats. If a wall were to slice through these ecosystems, it could cause irreversible damage to plants and animals already under serious threat.

"We've been dealing with all these negative environmental impacts of fences on the border for more than a decade," says Dan Millis of the Sierra Club Borderlands project. "And Trump's proposal would make it worse."

The border region is ecologically rich because a lot of it has been federally protected

The political boundary between the US and Mexico stretches 2,000 miles from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, there are three mountain chains, the two largest deserts in North America, vast cattle ranches, a handful of cities and their sprawling suburbs, and the Southern section of the mighty Rio Grande river.

Much of the region has never been heavily populated, and over the years, several large swaths of land have been designated as protected areas. Today there are 25 million acres of protected US public lands within 100 miles of the line. That includes six wildlife refuges, six national parks, tribal lands, wilderness areas, and conservation areas - all of them managed by various federal agencies and tribal governments.

On the Mexican side, meanwhile, sit protected areas like El Pinacate y Gran Desierto Altar, which abuts the US Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and parts of the Organ Pipe National Monument and Barry M. Goldwater Range in Arizona.

These protected areas have been established, in part, to protect wildlife and plants that span both countries. In the case of the El Pinacate and Cabeza Prieta, desert species like the Sonoran pronghorn (an antelope relative) have been able to migrate back and forth. But in recent years, that's gotten harder with the construction of long sections of vehicle barriers and fences, as you can see from the map.

"People think of deserts as barren lands and flat sand dunes with nothing there," Sergio Avila, a conservation scientist at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, says. "But deserts are very diverse and rich in life."

The protected areas on the border harbor an incredible array of wildlife and plants

When you trace the border from west to east (as this Story Map project by Krista Schlyer did), you find shrinking pockets of remarkable biological abundance. At the far west is the Tijuana Estuary, a key salt marsh habitat for some 400 species of migrating birds. At the far east, birds and butterflies stop through the Lower Rio Grande Valley, which is also a permanent home for colorful mammals, reptiles, and amphibians.

"There are tropical animal species in some of these canyons that are not found anywhere else," says Jesse Lasky, a biologist at Penn State who has studied the impact of border fences on border species. "They inhabit these little slices of tropical ecosystem that creep up into the US near the Gulf coast."

Not many scientists have measured the border's biodiversity in its totality - or the full impact of fences. One of the few studies to tackle these questions was written by Lasky and co-authors in 2011. They estimated that 134 mammal, 178 reptile, and 57 amphibian species live within about 30 miles of the line. Of those, 50 species and three subspecies are globally or federally threatened in Mexico or the United States. And they survive only because people on both sides have worked hard to conserve them.

Probably the most biologically impressive region on the border, according to Avila, is the sky islands, a range of mountain "islands" that extend from Arizona and New Mexico into Mexico and host a greater variety of life than almost anywhere else in North America. Most are part of the Coronado National Forest, the most ecologically diverse national forest in the country. The Coronado also hosts the greatest number of threatened and endangered species of any national forest in the US.

Living in those sky islands are spotted owls, jaguars, thick-billed parrots, barred tiger salamanders, Mount Graham red squirrels, and many more unusual species. But as with all of the protected areas on the border, these populations are dwindling fast. Climate change and urbanization are factors. But the biggest threat of all, according to Lasky, Avila, and other conservationists in the border region, are the fences that have been built along the border in the past couple of decades.

Border fences have been terrible for wildlife and plants

Since 1994, the US government has been erecting barriers to keep people and drugs from Mexico and beyond out. By 2010, about one-third of the border had been fenced with materials ranging from barbed wire to steel, bollard to wire mesh, and chain link. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security has built hundreds of miles of roads to allow the Border Patrol to access remote regions, both fenced and unfenced.

All of this construction has sliced and diced a lot of protected land along the border. And ever since the passage of the Real ID Act of 2005, DHS has had the power to waive most environmental reviews in the name of national security.

So, unlike most federal infrastructure projects, these fences have received little or no input from the public, land managers, conservation groups, or other agencies. Experts had no chance to assess beforehand what impact the fence might have on wildlife, plants, and rivers. Only after the fact have researchers documented instances where fences have interrupted wildlife corridors, and caused erosion and other damage to fragile ecosystems, as well as flooding.

But what evidence we do have is alarming. For instance, Lasky and his co-authors found that the biggest risk comes when fences bisect the range of a small population of a species with a specialized habitat, leaving the majority of the population on one side and the others adrift. His paper found 45 species and three subspecies that the current fence has affected this way.

Cutting off animal populations in this fashion leads to reduced gene flow and inbreeding -leading to a greater risk of extinction. Conservation groups are particularly worried about the Mexican gray wolf; in 2016, there were just 113 in the US and about three dozen south of the border. A wall between them could make the recovery of the population unsurmountable.

Fences also can also restrict animals' access to water sources - particularly problematic in the drought-prone Southwest. And they can make it harder for animals to adapt to climate change. "A lot of species do best in Northern Mexico, but with changes in precipitation patterns, they would need to disperse across the border," says Lasky. "This is something we should be thinking about a lot more - how fast organisms are responding to climate change."

The wall structures hurt animals and insects in other ways too. Some sections have lights that attract and zap pollinators, like the monarch butterfly, that migrate across the border. And the taller the fence, the more impassable it is for some bats and birds, like the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl.

Based on this research, leading groups like the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Defenders of Wildlife have strongly recommended against any further construction of fences on the border.

Trump's proposed wall could have a big impact on still-pristine areas

About two-thirds, or 1,350 miles, of the border remains unfenced. Trump said on July 13 that he intends to build a total 700 to 900 miles of new wall, which will be exceedingly difficult to do. (Cost estimates for walling off the entire border range from $21 billion to $40 billion, and 700 miles would cost at least $12 billion.)

But it's plausible that Congress will give US Customs and Border Patrol, the division of DHS in charge of border security, at least some of the $1.6 billion that Trump requested to build three segments totaling 74 miles for fiscal year 2018. That would reportedly include "28 miles of new levee wall system in Rio Grande Valley, 32 new miles of border wall system in the Rio Grande Valley, and 14 miles of replacement secondary barrier in San Diego," according to a DHS spokesperson.

San Diego is a sprawling urban center, but just south of it is the Tijuana Estuary, where the Tijuana River meets the Pacific Ocean. It's one of the most biodiverse areas in the entire state of California, according to Millis of the Sierra Club, and has already been impacted by fences. Replacing the fences there could mean more habitat destruction in the estuary.

Activists in Texas who've been tracking fence construction over the years say they think part of the new levee walls CPB would build if Congress allocates the money for them will bisect the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge - a collection of dozens of tracts of habitat stretching from Brownsville by the Gulf of Mexico to Rio Grande City, about 100 miles west.

This area is a refuge for 19 federally threatened and endangered species and 57 state protected species, including the ocelot and other species in the illustration below. And a wall could have a serious, in some cases deadly, impact on these species:

Walls and levee walls in this region could also pose a serious flooding hazard, says Millis. "They are particularly problematic because they would be the first walls built inside the Rio Grande floodplain, and thus are likely to cause floods in the populated areas where they are planned," he says.

Building fence where there is a flood risk has already caused chaos on other parts of the border: Flash floods in Nogales and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona have caused millions of dollars in damage and two deaths because of floodwaters that built up along the fence.

"Flood water always has debris in it," Millis says. "That's how you got these damming events that blew out chunks of wall. Damming also causes erosion - it creates the situation we saw in Arizona where debris backs up the water and then the sediment building upstream created a waterfall that causes more erosion. This is liable to happen in Texas."

Current walls in Texas are not in the floodplain - in part because a binational commission that oversees the Rio Grande River has refused to allow CPB to build there, fearing flooding in towns on both sides. But Scott Nicol, with the Sierra Club in McAllen, Texas, says he's worried that CPB intends to act unilaterally and will build new fence in the floodplain of the Rio Grande, despite Mexico's objections.

Another region of concern is the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in south Texas. According to a July 14 report in the Texas Observer, CPB officials have been quietly planning to build nearly three miles of 18-foot levee walls through it, which could ruin the habitat there for 400 bird species, rare plants, and the ocelot. Reuters also confirmed that CPB does not intend to do an environmental impact study (which would take several years) before beginning construction in the Santa Ana refuge, invoking its exemption under the Real ID Act.

One unfenced section of the border is precious jaguar habitat

The Trump administration is focused on building new fence in Texas and San Diego for the moment.But one day it could turn its sights on other unfenced sections - and one of the most troubling possibilities would be the miles of protected areas in Arizona and New Mexico where jaguars occasionally roam.

Jaguars are critically endangered in North America; the populations that once prowled New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Southern California were essentially hunted to extinction in the 20th century. The northernmost breeding population in the Americas - some 80 to 120 individuals - is in the Northern Jaguar Reserve in the Mexican state of Sonora.

Like wolves, jaguars like to ramble widely, with ranges anywhere from 10 to 50 square miles. And since 1996, seven males have been spotted in the US, giving conservation groups hope that they may be trying to reestablish a population on this side of the border. The Fish and Wildlife Service, along with several conservation groups, have tried to encourage them by establishing six critical habitat areas under the Endangered Species Act to allow the jaguars to enter the US.

"The only hope for natural re-colonization in the U.S., however remote, hinges on maintaining this core population to the south, and its connectivity," said Alan Rabinowitz, CEO of Panthera, in a statement. And a fence through the unfenced areas in the illustration above would clearly destroy that connectivity.

Conservationists say the threat of Trump's wall also puts a strain on binational relationships. "We have a lot of successful conservation partnerships working together with Mexico (monarch butterfly and jaguar, for example)," says Avila. "But these policies are putting a dent on those partnerships and pitting people against each other. They could sour the relationships." For instance, he says, changes in immigration policies are making it harder for him to bring Mexican officials to meetings in the US.

When it comes to protecting jaguars and other big cats threatened on the border, he says the solution is pretty simple: Just don't build a wall.

"We don't have to do that much. We have to leave them alone and allow them to move freely and their populations would move freely," he says. "If we create a wall for these species north or south of the border, it doesn't matter; they're blocked."

Will Trump ultimately get to build the border wall he's promised his supporters? We don't know if Congress will give him the money. But DHS's record of building fences whenever it can - with the anachronistic but still powerful argument that walls work for national security - suggests it will fight hard for it. And the tragedy for conservationists is that they have next to no legal leverage - when it comes to the border, security trumps just about every other law of the land.
Existing US-How Donald Trump could actually build the wall - and who would pay the price Donald Trump's plan to build a solar border wall, explained with math Mexico border fence data featured in the maps is from Reveal and How Trump's border policy may already be impacting migration to the US. t he C enter for Investigative Reporting and OpenStreetMap contributors.
Further reading:

Here's all the land (and water) Trump's border wall would have to cover.

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The ecological disaster that is Trump's border wall: a visual guide

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During the campaign, it was easy to scoff at President Donald Trump's promise to build a "big, beautiful" concrete wall along the US-Mexico border. It sounded, well, preposterous. But now the prospect of a border wall is quite real. Trump has requested $1.6 billion for fiscal year 2018 to build three segments totaling 74 miles.

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With its diminutive frame and legendary skittishness, the Sonoran pronghorn is emblematic of the delicate efforts required to save an endangered species. Relegated to the desert of southwest Arizona and northern Mexico, the pronghorn fights for survival from predators and the ever-constant threat of drought that comes with living in the desert.

Yet its recovery also depends on the delicate alliance of agencies and organizations throughout the United States and Mexico. Traditional environmental agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Arizona Game and Fish Department and National Park Service have had to work alongside their counterparts in Mexico, as well as other U.S. entities such as Border Patrol and the military, whose base makes up nearly half of the pronghorn's American habitat.

But despite international political tensions and disparate core missions of different organizations, John Hervert of Arizona Game and Fish said the positive momentum of the pronghorn's resilience has been a tribute to the multiagency recovery team.

"It boils down to people," Hervert said. "Whether or not people can get along and set their egos aside to some degree. If we didn't have those good working partnerships I wouldn't be too optimistic."

The optimism is backed up by numbers. A devastating drought in 2002 left about only 300 Sonoran pronghorn in the wild, including only 21 individuals in the United States. With help from a captive breeding program and active management, the numbers are now closer to 1,000. As one of the original 75 species protected by the Endangered Species Preservation Act, the Sonoran pronghorn can be seen both as a success story and a harbinger of how fragile progress can be.

Perhaps the biggest complicating factor for the pronghorn is the fact its habitat crosses the U.S.-Mexico border. Environmental groups such as Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Legal Defense Fund have all raised alarm about the effect of President Donald Trump's border wall on the pronghorn and other species in the area. In a motion for an injunction filed in August, the groups specifically listed migration as key to the species' survival.

"The erection of impenetrable bollard walls will truncate the crossborder movement of the endangered Sonoran pronghorn, ferruginous pygmy owl, and Bighorn sheep, which rely on connectivity to other adjacent populations for genetic variability and their continued survival," the motion said.

State and federal biologists don't necessarily dismiss those concerns, but they admit most of the damage to crossborder migration has already been done by Mexican Highway 2, which travels east-west along much of the Mexico-Arizona border. Unlike other ungulates such as deer or elk, pronghorns are notorious for being unwilling to cross highways.

Stephanie Doerries, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, recounted a single radio-collared buck in 2008 being recorded as crossing the highway several times, noting the crossings in place for pronghorn are underpasses and "pronghorn aren't really big on underpasses.

But the effects of crossborder migration on biological diversity need further study, Doerries said. She is currently working with Mexican biologists gathering fecal samples to determine genetic structures of the different populations of pronghorn.

"There are still a lot of questions about how much crossing do you need to have for there to be some level of genetic connectivity," Doerries said. "You might just need one individual every couple years for there to be some connectivity. That's a question we're still trying to answer with Sonoran pronghorn."

The study is just one of a multitude of collaborations that U.S. and Mexican biologists have in order to promote the survival of the fastest land mammal in North America. They coordinate biannual aerial surveys of the pronghorn's habitat. They also work together to determine destinations for pronghorn released from captive breeding pens in Arizona

Miguel Angel Grageda Garcia, who worked for three years as coordinator for natural resources at the Pinacate Biosphere Reserve in Sonora, Mexico, is now a doctoral student at the University of Arizona studying how Sonoran pronghorn are affected by human development. As a member of the Sonoran pronghorn recovery team, he said, travel to and from Mexico became increasingly difficult from 2015 to 2018

"They have these meetings every three to six months to talk about activities done to recover the pronghorn, and some future efforts. We have been attending these meetings and sometimes it wasn't that easy because we needed to have a special permit to travel outside of the country," he said. "Sometimes this permit needs to be obtained in advance, like two or three months before the meeting. And sometimes it is not that easy. So we had to miss some of those meetings because it wasn't easy to travel to the U.S."

He said the political tensions between U.S. and Mexico were probably to blame for the increased hurdles in collaboration.

"I think this last year, in 2018, was when it was harder for us to be able to travel to the U.S.," he said. "Before, we still needed to have a permit, but it didn't take so long to get it. It was always easier to do it. In the last year it was harder. Probably the change in administration may have been an issue in this situation."

Equally complicated for the pronghorn are the effects of the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to stem illegal traffic along the southern border. Drug smuggling routes and pedestrian border crossings through the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge have taken their toll on an environment that used to be pristine. But Border Patrol enforcement also causes disruption to pronghorn behavior by adding stress or frightening animals away from sources of food and water - including plots of lands managed by wildlife officials with enhanced foraging opportunities.

In 2009, biologists recorded a group of does and fawns that abandoned one of these forage enhancement plots because of the high amount of Border Patrol traffic; while the does were later observed at the nearby Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument park, the fawns had died.

Doerries said Border Patrol accounts for about 60 percent of all motor traffic on the refuge. And because pronghorn have been known to exhibit visible responses to vehicle noise more than 2 miles away, it's a constant struggle for biologists trying to mitigate the effects

And yet, some of the support for that mitigation is coming from Homeland Security itself. For example, when building an integrated fixed tower near Ajo, Arizona - mounted with high-tech cameras, radio, radar and other sensors to detect illegal border activity - the department earmarked $4.13 million specifically for Sonoran pronghorn conservation. That money helped fund aerial monitoring by Arizona Game and Fish, water tanks and equipment used by the National Park Service, staff and equipment at U.S. Fish and Wildlife, as well as surveys and research into the effects of human activities on pronghorn. Doerries said funding for her Ph.D. project as well as a previous position she held at Arizona Game and Fish Department were both the result of mitigation funding

"It's really useful to keep in mind that mission," Doerries said. "You know, there are times where certain areas of the refuge are dangerous and I'm going out in the field by myself to conduct field work. It's been nice to know that Border Patrol is nearby in a really desolate landscape where you don't have cell service. It can be useful to know there are people there.

"So many nuances to the desert here."

Like Hervert, Doerries said the partnerships between the myriad agencies has been critical for the rising population of pronghorn. They said the Marine Corps and the Air Force, too, have provided funding toward recovery efforts and will regularly close down tactical ranges and targets at Luke Air Force Base if pronghorn are nearby

"Certainly everybody doesn't think the same - but everybody's really great at recognizing let's work for the good of the pronghorn. Let's give a little bit here," Doerries said. "I wouldn't say everything goes smoothly all the time, but I think people generally try to take the approach that we don't have bad motives."

That goodwill certainly extends to the recovery team members from Mexico, as well, although Hervert said his level of optimism isn't as high for the pronghorn population south of the border.

"It gets messy down there because even land ownership is not very clear. Somebody may own the mineral rights. Somebody else might have ranching rights. And somebody else might have the rights to hunting. All on the same property," Hervert said. "It's complex, and it's hard for the Mexican biologists to have the authority to do what needs to be done to protect habitats or to prevent fragmentation."

The sustainability of habitat is one of the factors that come into play as the recovery team decides on an annual basis which of the four pronghorn populations should receive members from the captive breeding program.

Arguably the most meaningful recovery effort, the captive breeding pens on the Kofa and Cabeza Prieta wildlife refuges house more than a hundred pronghorn combined. Each year, pronghorn are captured from the pens and relocated to existing populations on the refuges or in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, part of the National Park System. To date, 260 pronghorn have been released from the captive breeding pens, though none of them has been transported out of the country, despite some of the original captive breeding stock coming from the Quitovac population in northern Mexico.

That might change this winter. A half-dozen pronghorn are slated to be transported to Mexico, potentially helping to connect - at least genetically - different populations of pronghorn. But the relocation, as well as the long-term management and monitoring, will require that biologists from different agencies and countries continue working together.

"Species don't know about boundaries. They just know about their habitat. They don't know what's going on with political divisions," Garcia said. "I think it's very important for all of us biologists to work together and to have plans in the future, even if we are in different countries, different states, different protected areas. The populations sometimes are the same ones. And it should be managed in the same way."
Kelly Furnas is a freelance writer, photographer and web developer. He teaches multimedia journalism at Elon (N.C.) University.

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Protecting The Sonoran Pronghorn From Extinction

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With its diminutive frame and legendary skittishness, the Sonoran pronghorn is emblematic of the delicate efforts required to save an endangered species. Relegated to the desert of southwest Arizona and northern Mexico, the pronghorn fights for survival from predators and the ever-constant threat of drought that comes with living in the desert.

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Geographic Range

The Sonoran Pronghorn is found in the nearctic region, with a concentration of populations in southwestern Arizona, and some spread into northern Mexico. Although the species Antilocapra americana ranges from southern Canada to northern Mexico, the A. a. sonoriensis subspecies has a very limited range.

Habitat

The Sonoran Pronghorn inhabits dry plains and desert. In southwestern Arizona, this species is found in broad alluvial valleys separated by granite mountains and mesas. These areas experience excessive winter rains followed by a spring drought, and summer rains followed by autumn drought. The dry, sparsely vegetated landscape is due to the arid climate of this region.

Physical Description

Height: ~0.9 m at the shoulder The Sonoran Pronghorn has the characteristic artiodactyl body form. This subspecies has a particularly light build, which contributes to its fast speed; Pronghorns are the fastest North American mammals. Females are roughly 10% smaller than males. All pronghorns have a very short, hardly noticeable tail, ears that are proportional in size to the body and with narrow points, no upper canines, and well-developed scent glands. Both males and females have horns that are specialized with a layer of hornskin covering the bony core. The horns are branched at about 2/3 of the distance between the base and the tip. However, bucks' horns are 30.5 centimeters in length, whereas does' horns are shorter than the ears and often misshapen or even absent altogether. The upperparts of the Pronghorn are a warm tan color, and the neck has a short black mane. The underparts, rump, and 2 bands across the neck are white. Less information is available about Sonoran Pronghorns than about other Antilocapra americana subspecies. However, given that A.a.sonoriensis lives in a very arid climate, it is likely that its physiology is somewhat more adapted to extreme conditions. It must endure higher temperatures, exposure to intense solar radiation, and scarcity of water and food resources. All these conditions call for more thermoregulation and a balance in hydration.

Reproduction

Pronghorns have high reproductive rates. This is an adaptation for a short life span of 7 to 10 years, although individuals rarely exceed 9 years. The complex and rigid territoriality systems of bucks break down only during the breeding season. Dominant males court estrus females by offering a sniff of the scent glands located under patches of black hair below the ears. When it comes time to mate, dominant males disappear into hiding places with the estrus females. The male may circle the female with exaggerated steps, alternately flashing the black patches on his right and left cheeks. During this time, younger males move into the herds of non-breeding females. The gestation period for Pronghorns is 250 days. Females often leave their herd to give birth, and will give birth to 1 to 2 young, each of which weighs between 2.25 kg and 3 kg. The young lay hidden; if twins are born, they are kept separately. Young are further protected from predators by their negligible scent; this makes them virtually undetectable in their hiding places. Young Pronghorns are weaned at 4 to 5 months, and reach adult size at 6 months. Sexual maturity occurs at 2 years. At the conclusion of the breeding season, termed the "rut," males shed their horn sheaths and look very similar to females. As they rejoin the female herd, the camouflage of blending in compensates for their post-breeding exhaustion and vulnerability.

gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)

Behavior

Although pronghorns form large, loose aggregations of all ages and both sexes during the fall and winter, from late March to early October, groups become smaller and are segregated by sex. At this time, males over 3 years of age compete with one another for possession of territories roughly 0.25 to 4 square kilometers in size. An ideal territory is characterized by a permanent water source, prominent physical borders, and may be separated from other territories by an unoccupied space of up to 0.8 kilometers. They mark their territories by rubbing secretions of the rear gland on plants, scraping the ground, urinating, and defecating. When there is a threat of intrusion by another male, the dominant male Pronghorn will stare his competitor down. If the challenger holds his ground, there may occur aggressive behavior, such as an approach, a chase, and a fight. A male tries to keep groups of females within his territory and other males out. Female groups include up to 23 members, have a permanent hierarchy, and move about freely over the male territories. It is common for these herds to cover several areas during the breeding season. Younger males form bachelor herds with up to 36 members. These groups tend to pursue the female herds, but are often avoided. Older males sometimes return to the same territory each year. However, if they are unable to defend their area from other males, they will wander around alone. Pronghorns are a very curious and tamable species. Near inhabited areas, they become easily accustomed to human noises and may move to urban peripheries to browse on hedges and gardens in winter.

Communication and Perception

Food Habits

This species is strictly herbivorous, eating a diet of herbs, cacti, and some desert grasses. Cheek teeth with high crowns are an adaptation to dust-covered, abrasive foods. The Sonoran Pronghorn is a member of the ruminant family, which is characterized by a four-part stomach. This specialized stomach serves as a "fermentation vat": after eating, individuals regurgitate softened cud, which is then chewed again, reswallowed, and finally digested. This digestion system is key in this desert subspecies for a number of reasons. It facilitates the digestion of roughly textured foods such as cacti and desert grasses. It also allows for a high and long retention of both food and water, which is essential in an environment characterized by resource scarcity. Lastly, the stomach lining of ruminant stomachs is highly tolerant of urea, which exists in high concentrations in desert organisms due to highly concentrated urine.

Economic Importance for Humans: Positive

Sonoran Pronghorns were an abundant and accessible food and trophy source for many years.

Economic Importance for Humans: Negative

Pronghorns move into urban areas and browse on hedges and gardens.

Conservation Status

The Sonoran subspecies of pronghorn antelope was listed as endangered on June 2, 1970. Primary threats are habitat destruction due to overgrazing and damming and diversion of rivers. Pronghorn antelope are an endemic American species, whose numbers were severely threatened with the arrival of European settlers. Within 100 years, populations fell from several million to 19,000 animals. Pronghorn antelope are easy prey due to their curiosity. In the winter of 1868-1869, antelope (most likely from the subspecies ( A. a. americana, found throughout the northern great plains) were transported to various cities by the wagon load between Denver and Cheyenne; 3 to 4 pronghorn were sold as food at prices as low as $.25 (Grzimek 1990). Conservation efforts began at the beginning of the 20th century. When the sale of game meat was outlawed, numbers rose to about 600,000. Feldner, unavailable)

Contributors

Lisa Ingmarsson (author), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

Glossary

tropical savanna and grassland

A terrestrial biome. Savannas are grasslands with scattered individual trees that do not form a closed canopy. Extensive savannas are found in parts of subtropical and tropical Africa and South America, and in Australia.

savanna

A grassland with scattered trees or scattered clumps of trees, a type of community intermediate between grassland and forest. See also Tropical savanna and grassland biome.

temperate grassland

A terrestrial biome found in temperate latitudes (>23.5° N or S latitude). Vegetation is made up mostly of grasses, the height and species diversity of which depend largely on the amount of moisture available. Fire and grazing are important in the long-term maintenance of grasslands.

References

Grzimek's Encyclopedia of Mammals, 1990. McGraw-Hill Publishing, New York, New York.Vol#5: Pp.282-285.

Feldner, J. unavailable. "The Pronghorn" (On-line). Desert USA. Accessed October 31, 2003 at http://www.desertusa.com/mag99/may/papr/pronghorn.html.

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The Sonoran Pronghorn is found in the nearctic region, with a concentration of populations in southwestern Arizona, and some spread into northern Mexico. Although the species Antilocapra americana ranges from southern Canada to northern Mexico, the A. a. sonoriensis subspecies has a very limited range. The Sonoran Pronghorn inhabits dry plains and desert.

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How would a border wall affect wildlife?

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How would a border wall affect wildlife?

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How would a border wall affect wildlife?

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Federal plans to complete a continuous wall along the U.S.-Mexico boundary would threaten the existence of numerous plant and animal species. Stanford's Paul Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo look at the region's unique natural ecosystems, and what they have to lose.

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The U.S. Mexico border is a challenging place to survive for a Sonoran pronghorn. Nearly two decades ago, this endangered species faced near extinction in its only home, an embroiled, increasingly shrinking habitat in Southwest Arizona. There in the Sonoran Desert, a passionate recovery team has dedicated significant efforts and investments to sustaining the approximately 200 remaining Sonoran pronghorns left in the U.S. The team faces two enormous obstacles that most endangered species rescue missions don't usually have to deal with. The first: a persistent drought that zaps water and plant life from the desert, making it hard for the animal to stay hydrated a nd fed. The second: Human disturbance in its range from off road driving by U.S. border patrol agents monitoring migrants. Its home happens to be one of the most concentrated areas of illegal activity at the border, and the off road driving further dries out vital plant life and diverts waterflow in the desert. It's also not the only environmental impact of border activity, as the recovery team's research shows. For the Sonoran pronghorn - North America's fastest land mammal, an iconic creature seen on the landscape since prehistoric times - there is nowhere to go when the rain never comes during drought. The recovery team monitors the dire situation chasing pronghorns that can sprint up to 60 miles per hour to deliver food and water when the Sonoran Desert is too dry to graze. As it becomes harder for the Sonoran pronghorn to escape increasingly inescapable human activity, it also becomes harder for the recovery team to ensure the Sonoran pronghorn survives its estimated nearly one in four chance of being extinct by the end of this century.

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Ashley Belanger is a journalist whose reporting, features, and essays explore the tensions between what science discovers and what humans experience. Captivated by neuroscience and technology, as an arts critic, she garnered recognition for essays discussing scientific theories in the context of pop music. Through her career, she's engaged communities both local, as associate editor of Orlando Weekly, and national, as culture writer for the classic television network MeTV. In her freelance reporting, she works to connect public health studies to critical social issues and has generated in-depth web features for Teen Vogue on complex topics, including child marriage and school shootings. She earned a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Florida. Thesis: Where the Desert Ghost Roams

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The U.S. Mexico border is a challenging place to survive for a Sonoran pronghorn. Nearly two decades ago, this endangered species faced near extinction in its only home, an embroiled, increasingly shrinking habitat in Southwest Arizona. There in the Sonoran Desert, a passionate recovery team has dedicated significant efforts and investments to sustaining the approximately 200 remaining Sonoran pronghorns left in the U.S.

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What difficulties do migrants face in attempt to cross the border?

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https://texasbutterflyranch.com/2021/08/24/things-look-good-as-2021-monarch-butterfly-migration-takes-flight/

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The monarch butterfly migration of 2021 has begun, and based on reports from Canada and sightings of the iconic insects in San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country, the insects are running strong.

"Two of us spent about one hour in the late morning and one hour in the afternoon capturing monarchs," reported longtime monarch butterfly tagger Donald Davis from Port Hope, Ontario, on August 20. Davis said he and a friend tagged 164 butterflies at a clover field near Lake Ontario. "Almost all monarchs captured were in pristine condition," he shared via the DPLEX list, a monarch enthusiast email group with hundreds of members.

Citizen science organization Journey North, which tracks the monarch migration and others, reported sightings of a handful of roosts as of this writing.

"First monarchs that I've observed in an annual roosting location near Tobermory, Ontario, Canada," an observer identified as Peter noted on August 20. He added that the roost of about 200 had island hopped across Lake Huron and were "resting/fuelling up for the next leg of the journey."

The next leg of that journey will bring the international travelers through San Antonio and what's known as the Texas Funnel in September and October. Peak monarch migration occurs at our latitude October 10 - 22-just in time for San Antonio's sixth annual Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival, which takes place this year October 16 at Confluence Park.

During the migration, monarchs typically nectar on flowers in the morning, fly during the day, then drop from the sky in the evening to roost overnight in groups. Check out Journey North's live migration maps here.

Dozens of monarch butterflies have been spotted along the San Antonio River in downtown San Antonio in recent weeks. Numerous accounts of monarch eggs, caterpillars, adults- even native milkweeds-have been reported, unusual for this time of year. Typically such sightings occur in these parts around Labor Day, and are known as the " premigration migration. "

"I've had Monarchs scouting the milkweed for the last three weeks," said Drake White, owner of the San Antonio native landscaping firm The Nectar Bar. "I've noticed changes in many of the butterflies this year, and in several butterflies showing their Fall form in July! I think we're in for an early winter," she said.

So what's the forecast for this year's migration?

Chip Taylor, founder of citizen scientist organization Monarch Watch, which celebrates 30 years of studying, tracking and tagging monarch butterflies this fall, wrote recently that conditions appear "favorable for a large migratory population that could rival that of 2018" for monarchs east of the Rocky Mountains. That year, the monarch population jumped to a healthy 6.05 hectares/15 acres at the overwintering sites in Mexico where numbers are counted annually.

Taylor expressed concerns about monarch numbers from the eastern Dakotas and western Minnesota since those areas "have been much warmer and drier than is generally ideal for monarch population development." He laid out his forecast in an August 17 post on the organization's blog.

He added that perhaps due to adequate rainfall and moderate summer temperatures, monarchs are much more abundant in Oklahoma and Texas right now, and suggested that large numbers of monarchs could join the migration from those states in late September and October.

"The September temperatures are still a question," he wrote, "but there is no evidence of a drought in Texas or elsewhere that might diminish the possibility of surviving the passage to the overwintering sites."

"There is every reason to expect a larger overwintering population in Mexico this year than seen during the last two winters," he concluded.

That is not the case for the western monarch population, which has suffered severely this year.

"In the West, the prospects for an overwintering population of more than a few hundred monarchs along the California coast appear to be slim at best," wrote Taylor, citing extreme temperatures, drought and wildfires.

Karen Oberhauser, director of UW-Madison Arboretum and founder and director of the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project, agreed with Taylor's upbeat assessment of the eastern migration.

"Based on egg and larva data collected by MLMP volunteers and sightings by butterfly monitors, my guess is that things will be better than last year," she said via email. "But a lot can happen between now and then," she added, referring to the myriad variables that factor into the migration's success: wildfires, hurricanes, cold snaps, heat waves, and human interference such as aerial pesticide spraying.

Andy Davis, migration studies expert at the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia, declined to comment.

Thousands of citizen scientists tag monarchs each fall. They capture migrating butterflies in nets, adhere a tiny sticker to the discal cell of their forewing, record the butterfly's sex, the date, time and place of the tagging, and report the data to Monarch Watch. At this year's Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival in San Antonio, organizers will continue a tradition begun last year in response to COVID deaths known as the Forever Journey campaign. The initiative tags each butterfly in honor of someone who died.

For those unaware, monarchs either migrate or mate. They don't have the energy to do both. The butterflies that spend their winters in the Mexican mountains experience what's called reproductive diapause -that is, they postpone all reproductive activities until spring.

That's when the multi-generation migration begins, as monarchs move north in search of milkweed on which to lay their eggs. The cycle continues throughout the summer as the first generation gives way to the second, until the fall when fourth and fifth generation monarchs get cues from the sun that alert them to start heading south.

Here in the Texas Funnel, mild summer temps and regular rain following the historic freeze in February that knocked out many nonnative plants has resulted in an unusually robust early monarch season.

"It's definitely a crazy year," said Jennie Singleton, longtime monarch tagging and docent for the city of Grapevine's Butterfly Flutterby Festival. "Normally I get caterpillars in mid September ahead of the big migration. This year there have been caterpillars since the first of August."

Singleton said since returning from a summer road trip on August 13, she's found caterpillars every day.

In Comfort, just outside San Antonio, Cathy Downs, an outreach specialist for Monarch Watch, reported no sightings of monarchs or larvae since late July. "My Asclepias asperula milkweed has senesced here," said Downs, referring to Antelope horns milkweed that typically blooms in the spinrg. "I had some larva on Asclepias texana in late July. I was hoping for a 2nd emergence as I missed my harvest. Fifth generation [monarchs] is getting to be a regular thing in Texas for several years now."
TOP PHOTO: Monarch butterfly at pollinator garden in downtown San Antonio's Nueva St. bridge on August 14, 2021. Photo by Monika Maeckle
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"Things look good" as 2021 monarch butterfly migration takes flight

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The monarch butterfly migration of 2021 has begun, and based on reports from Canada and sightings of the iconic insects in San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country, the insects are running strong. "Two of us spent about one hour in the late morning and one hour in the afternoon capturing monarchs," reported longtime monarch butterfly tagger Donald Davis from Port Hope, Ontario, on August 20.

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Effects of Human Activities on Sonoran Pronghorn - a Noninvasive Approach - UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

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Sonoran pronghorn (SOPH) (Antelocapra americana sonoriensis) are one of the most highly endangered mammalian subspecies in the world. Fewer than 200 exist in the United States, all in Arizona.

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https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2020/10/16/monarchs-other-butterflies-migrate-through-san-antonio/

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SAN ANTONIO - Monarch butterflies are beautiful and in some cultures are symbols of hope.

In Mexico, monarchs represent the Souls of the Dead returning to Earth for their annual visit.

Right now you can see the butterflies migrating through San Antonio and South Texas.

"This is the population that makes that long journey of 2,000 miles between their wintering grounds in Mexico and areas north of here," said Lee Marlowe, sustainable landscape ecologist for the San Antonio River Authority.

The monarchs pass through South Texas and feed on native flowers for nectar to fuel up for the extensive trip.

Earlier this year, some of a KSAT crew visited the forest in Mexico where millions of monarchs live during the winter months.

But monarchs aren't the only butterflies migrating through our neighborhoods right now.

Marlowe said American Snout butterflies are flooding the area by the hundreds of thousands.

"They are moving regionally, they are moving because of new growth, a host plant they use called Hackberry," Marlowe said.

The butterflies are more than just beautiful creatures to look at. Marlowe said butterflies and other pollinators like bees, birds, wasps and insects are crucial to our food supply.

"Pollinators are important to us because of the food that results from their activity," Marlowe said.

And she said we are seeing less of them.

"It's most likely related to habitat loss and habitat conversion, so loss of natural native plant cover and native plant communities is the biggest driver of loss of animal life," Marlowe said.

She said butterflies and insect pollinators are connected very closely to our bird population, and once one part of the food chain in our ecosystem weakens it has a domino effect.

But there are ways we can help.

Marlowe said by planting native plants, especially flowering native plants, can provide nectar and food for butterflies and other pollinators.

"We can help restore and conserve some of this biodiversity that we know is really important for our own survival," she said.

To celebrate our butterflies and pollinators every year the Texas Butterfly Ranch hosts the Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival.

Typically the festival takes place at the Pearl in October, but because of the pandemic- the festival this year is a month-long series of virtual events.

From movie screenings about the importance of bees to tutorials on how to garden for monarchs and pollinators can be found on the Texas Butterfly Ranch website.

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Sarah Acosta, Azian Bermea, Eddie Latigo, Misael Gomez

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Monarchs, other butterflies migrate through San Antonio

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SAN ANTONIO - Monarch butterflies are beautiful and in some cultures are symbols of hope. In Mexico, monarchs represent the Souls of the Dead returning to Earth for their annual visit. Right now you can see the butterflies migrating through San Antonio and South Texas.

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Surviving Human Trafficking: My Long Journey toward Healing My name is Lidia* and I came to the United States from San Pedro Sula, Honduras. I had to leave my home for many reasons, including abuse from family and strangers as a child, fear

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Scholars have declared feminization to be a core dimension of the new age of international migration and globalization. In one sense this is accurate: between 1960 and 2015, the number of female migrants doubled. But so did the number of male migrants and the size of the earth's population. As a proportion of international migrants, by contrast, the female share increased only slightly from 46.6 percent in 1960 to 48 percent in 2015. Examination of global patterns of migration over the centuries leads to a more nuanced understanding of the meaning of feminization, and suggests that scholars failed to notice a substantial uptick in female migration that occurred well before 1960. Such analysis demonstrates that women have always migrated, often in substantial numbers. The greater challenge facing migration researchers is to understand the causes and consequences of the migration gender balance, which shifts over time and varies considerably across cultures and nations.
The Feminization of Migration Goes Global
For more than four centuries, women have been part of global migration flows. During the early period of European empire-building, many migrants were coerced labor and not universally male. The gender composition of African forced (or coerced) migrants varied over time (see Figure 1). Although the representation of men increased over the course of the Atlantic slave trade, the presence of women varied considerably by destination and sending region. Among the most extreme variations over time was the drop from 70.4 percent female in 1546 to just 6 percent in 1548.
Figure 1. Female Share of Slave Trade Embarkations, 1532-1864
Note: This figure combines all data about the sex of African forced migrants on voyages recorded in the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database.

Source: Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, "List of voyages," available online, data compiled and accessed by authors in 2012 and first published in Katharine M. Donato and Donna Gabaccia, Gender and International Migration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2015).

In the 19 th and early 20 th centuries, international migrants were largely settler colonizers and wage earners. In both groups men were often the first to migrate, with women following as colonies grew. While the earlier movement of settler colonizers was relatively gender balanced, between 1840 and 1924 global labor migrations became heavily male and circulatory as empires grew and increasing levels of international trade demanded temporary male workers to build infrastructure and work on plantations and in heavy industry. Figure 2 shows the gender composition of global emigration flows during this time. Women made up between 20 percent and 40 percent of emigrants, except in 1874 and 1875 when they represented about half of the outflows.
Figure 2. Global Emigration Totals and Female Share, 1840-1924
Source: Authors' compilation, first published in Donato and Gabaccia, Gender and International Migration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2015), based on data from Walter F. Willcox and Imre Ferenczi, eds., International Migrations Volume 1: Statistics (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1929), available online.

Beginning in the mid-1920s, increased regulation of immigration in many countries pushed global migrations toward gender balance. As national laws increasingly restricted male-dominated labor migration, women and families became a larger share of the immigrant population. This increase in the female share of global migrant flows thus resulted as much from the control of male labor migrants as from the number of women moving primarily to developed nations, such as the United States, as spouses of U.S. citizens, refugees, and other non-labor migrants. By the first decade of the 21 st century, gender balance characterized many migrations worldwide. Figure 3 shows, for example, that among the world's foreign born, women consistently represented 47 percent to 48 percent of international migrants between 1960 and 2010.
Figure 3. Estimates of the Gender Composition of Global Migrant Populations for 66 Selected Countries (ages 18 and older), 1960-2010
Note: The two lines represent the standardized and unstandardized estimates of gender composition. The standardized estimates control for differences in expected lifespan between sexes in populations over time and are more conservative than the unstandardized estimates.

Source: Authors' compilation, first published in Donato and Gabaccia, Gender and International Migration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2015), based on data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) International at the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota.
Feminization: Not a Recent Development
In 1984, U.S. Labor Department demographers published data in the International Migration Review (IMR) showing women represented 52.3 percent of recent immigrants to the United States. In the same IMR special issue, the journal's first to focus on migrant women, sociologist Saskia Sassen-Koob explored the feminization of the workforce in small-scale agriculture areas characterized by male migration, in global assembly plants in Asia, and in wealthy nations seeking foreign women as domestic laborers. Less than a year later, The New York Times ran an article entitled "Men Only a Third of U.S. Immigrants," suggesting that fewer immigrants would be entering the labor market as the proportion of migrants who were women and children rose. Then, approximately a decade later, social scientists Stephen Castles and Mark Miller further spread the idea of feminization of migration, making it a defining global pattern in their widely read book, The Age of Migration.

This flurry of scholarly attention continues in the study of how gender shapes different dimensions of migration. But as shown above, feminization is not a recent development-the biggest shifts toward gender balance occurred before 1960-and the global migration of women and girls has a very long history.

The United States, as a paradigmatic nation of immigrants, offers a useful example. The U.S. census data presented in Figure 4 show the percentage of women in the U.S. immigrant population between 1850 and 2010, and suggest that gender dynamics in immigration were more volatile before 1930 than afterward. Figure 4 also suggests that the increasing share of women among U.S. immigrants in the 20 th century may have been associated with shifts in the absolute number of the foreign born, although other explanations such as shifts in labor demand and the influence of emigration and admission policies merit further research. Prior to 1960, for example, the female share rose while the number of immigrants fell; afterward, women's representation rose as the number of U.S. immigrants also increased. After 1970, however, shifts in the female share were small and the population was largely gender balanced, despite a substantial rise in the overall number of immigrants. This changing relationship between the volume and gender composition of the U.S. immigrant population is the most significant characteristic of recent, yet modest, levels of feminization.
Figure 4. Gender Composition of U.S. Immigrants, 1850-2010
Note: The standardized estimates control for differences in expected lifespan between sexes in populations over time and are more conservative than the unstandardized estimates.

Source: Authors' compilation, first published in Donato and Gabaccia, Gender and International Migration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2015), of data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) at the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota.

So why did the significant number of women and girls among international migrants before the 1960s go unnoticed for so long? And why, then, did small upward shifts in the presence of women attract so much attention? The answer lies in how evidence is produced and how researchers and statisticians collected the data and constructed the categories that measure the relative numbers of female and male migrants. These practices have resulted in vague definitions of feminization and have obscured important variations in migrant gender composition.
Ambiguous Definitions
Feminization, when used in the context of migration, has been defined in many ways. Some scholars used the term to refer to rising numbers of women migrants between two years or time periods, to describe recent shifts in women's roles or prominence in migrant populations, or to highlight increasing shares of women among all migrants. Scholars in different disciplines also measure feminization differently. While many sociologists often use sex ratios to capture granular variations, historians prefer "percent female" as a way to describe shifts in gender composition over long periods of time.

Yet understanding the causes and consequences of differing migration patterns among men and women requires a careful, not vague, definition of feminization. Consider the following: Comparing migrant gender composition in 2015 to that in 1960 yields just a 1.4 percentage point increase over a 45-year period. However, this move toward gender balance appears much more robust if 2005 is compared to 1900, when global demand for male labor migrants was nearing its peak. Thus, comparisons over a longer history and larger geographic scale are necessary to understand, for example, when and why a shift toward global gender balance began.
Obscured Variations and Their Causes
The balance of men and women among international migrants varies not just across time but also across world regions and individual countries. Table 1 shows, for example, that during the period of early forced migration between Africa and the Americas, some African regions sent populations that were more male-predominant than those from other regions. In an important counterpoint to early migration research, these data suggest that sellers and purchasers of slaves were not exclusively concerned with (male) migrants as forms of productive labor. Instead, they viewed women and girls as valuable for their reproductive capacity, which promised to strengthen lineage groups and slave workforces.
Table 1. Share of Female Forced Migrants Exported and Imported by Region, 1532-1864
Source: Authors' compilation based on Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, "List of voyages," accessed in 2012.

Spatial variation in the gender composition of contemporary global migrant populations is also significant. In 1960 the foreign-born population in the Netherlands was 61 percent female, in 2001 in Nepal it was 70 percent female, and more recently in South Africa it was approximately 35 percent. Underlying these variations are patterns and shifts in gender relations and ideologies that increasingly operate on a global scale. The distinctly female-predominant immigrant population in the Netherlands was driven both by the decolonization of Indonesia and Suriname, which motivated return migration among Dutch expatriates (many of them with Indonesian or Surinamese brides), and by a mid-20 th century influx of female-predominant World War II refugees. The high proportion of women among migrants in Nepal reflects marriage migration practices in South Asia and the free movement of people between Nepal and India since 1950. The smaller share of women in South Africa reflects a longstanding tradition of male circular labor migration in the region which, until recently, was largely driven by employment in mineral mining and extraction, for global export markets.
And the Consequences?
Although some scholars have examined how migrant gender composition affects labor force participation, marriage formation, racial differences in family structure, and cultural responses to migration, this work is relatively new and overwhelmingly considers the consequences of the gender composition for migrants after 1990. Moreover, most of these studies describe the substantial negative effects of male-predominant, not female-predominant, migrant populations, associating the predominance of men to political instability, high levels of violence, and the mistreatment of women.

Though limited to the United States by the availability of long-term data, a closer look at the past century suggests modest effects, at best, of changing migrant gender composition. On the one hand, the characteristics of U.S.-born women and men and their foreign-born counterparts have converged since 1910. On the other, persistent but small differences can be seen in the labor force participation rates of specific national-origin groups that have had relatively more migrant men or women. Clearer signs of convergence in labor market activity between 1960 and 2010 appear in Figure 5, with the rates of both foreign-born women (Panel A) and men (Panel B) nearing those of their U.S.-born counterparts. For women, upward shifts reflect the growth in employment for married women; for men the downward shift occurred among married and unmarried and among both foreign and U.S. born.
Figure 5. Predicted Probabilities of Being in Labor Force by Nativity and Gender, 1960-2010

Note: Analysis restricted to those ages 25-54.

Source: Authors' compilation, first published in Donato and Gabaccia, Gender and International Migration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2015), of data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) at the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota.
Where Does the Discussion of "Feminization" Go from Here?
Finally, an examination of marriage patterns in the United States by the authors shows that although there were more marriages between foreign- and U.S.-born individuals in the period between 1970 and 2010, this increase was largely driven by the growth of the total immigrant population across the 20 th century. After 1970, interethnic cross-nativity marriages actually declined, as many newcomers married the U.S.-born descendants of earlier immigrant groups.
Table 2. Typology for Describing the Female Share of a Population
By looking at the shifting gender composition of migrant flows and immigrant populations through a historical and global lens, it becomes readily apparent that there are important patterns and variations not accounted for in the contemporary debate over the feminization of migration. In addition to the utility of looking at seemingly recent trends over a longer period of time, the authors propose a shift in terminology: The typology distinguishes between routine and predictable variations in gender composition and more substantial increases or decreases in the female share of migration likely caused by evolving gender relations, labor market roles, and ideology. The authors use the terms "heavy," "predominant," and "gender balanced" to describe populations with higher or lower shares of women, creating the spectrum described in Table 2.

Source: Donato and Gabaccia, Gender and International Migration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2015).

These definitions permit more concrete description of the feminization and masculinization a population is experiencing, by shifting from one category to another (e.g. from heavily male to male predominant). In addition, these more narrow definitions allow for consideration of potential consequences of the gender composition for migrants, their homelands, or the societies they enter. Together, they suggest that careful interrogation of data and how they are used matter for studies of gender and migration.
Acknowledgments
As future research continues to rely on a patchwork of data sources, migration researchers should insure that the insights their work offers do not render some groups of people, such as women or children, invisible. They also should query the underlying perspectives that datasets and measurements produce to better appreciate the fluidity of gender composition.
Sources
This article draws significantly from the authors' book, Gender and International Migration. published in 2015 by the Russell Sage Foundation.

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Donato, Katharine M., J. Trent Alexander, Donna Gabaccia, and Johanna Leinonen. 2011. Variations in the Gender Composition of Immigrant Populations: How and Why They Matter. International Migration Review 45 (3): 495-525.

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Donato, Katharine M., Donna Gabaccia, Jennifer Holdaway, Martin Manalansan IV, and Patricia R. Pessar. 2006. A Glass Half Full? Gender in Migration Studies. International Migration Review 40 (1): 3-26.

Gabaccia, Donna R. 1996. Women of the Mass Migrations: From Minority to Majority, 1820- 1930. In European Migrants: Global and Local Perspectives, eds. David Hoerder and L. Moch. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Gabaccia, Donna R. 2014. Time and Temporality in Migration Studies. In Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines, 3 rd edition, eds. Caroline Brettell and James Hollifield. New York: Routledge.

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Muus, Philip. 2004. The Netherlands: A Pragmatic Approach to Economic Needs and Humanitarian Considerations. In Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective, ed. Wayne A. Cornelius. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Pear, Robert. 1985. Men Only a Third of U.S. Immigrants. New York Times, September 9, 1985. Available Online.

Ravenstein, E.G. 1885. The Laws of Migration. Journal of the Statistical Society of London 48 (2): 167-235.

Sassen-Koob, Saskia. 1984. Notes on the Incorporation of Third World Women into Wage-Labor through Immigration and Off-shore Production. International Migration Review 18 (4): 1144-67.

United Nations. 2016. International Migration Report: Highlights. New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Available Online.

van Amersfoort, Hans. 2011. How the Dutch Government Stimulated the Unwanted Immigration from Suriname. International Migration Institute working paper 47, University of Oxford, October 2011. Available Online.

Willcox, Walter F. and Imre Ferenczi, eds. 1929. International Migrations Volume 1: Statistics. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. Available Online.

Zlotnick, Hania. 1990. International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants. International Migration Review 24 (2): 372-81.

---. 2003. The Global Dimensions of Female Migration. Migration Information Source, March 1, 2003. Available Online.

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The Global Feminization of Migration: Past, Present, and Future

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Scholars have declared feminization to be a core dimension of the new age of international migration. This article sketches a more nuanced understanding, noting that an uptick in female migration occurred far earlier. The authors examine global historical patterns of female migration in order to understand the causes and consequences of the migration gender balance, which varies considerably across time, cultures, and nations.

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Thought this might be interesting to you. Let me know if you can't access it.

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A Vision 60 robot dog at the southern border. (-/AFP/Getty Images)

Geoffrey Boyce is academic director of the Earlham College Border Studies Program in Tucson. Sam Chambers is a researcher in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is experimenting with technology that would allow it to release a new creature into the Arizona desert: robotic dogs.

Headless, four-legged and made of metal, these 100-pound "ground drones" would be tasked with looking for migrants within the roughly 41,500 square miles that compose the U.S. Border Patrol's area of operations within Arizona. They would augment a roughly 30-year investment the Department of Homeland Security and its predecessors have made in high-tech surveillance tools meant to catch migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and discourage others from trying.

But robotic dogs are the last thing we need to address the urgent needs of migrants, asylum seekers and residents of local communities.

The Border Patrol's use of high-tech surveillance systems in the desert has already directly contributed to an alarming spike in migrants' deaths - the result of a border-control plan that has failed to meaningfully curb or deter migration but has actively funneled migrants toward punishingly inhospitable terrain.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, the Border Patrol began pushing migrants toward the desert by pumping resources - significantly beefed-up patrols, physical barriers, surveillance technology and checkpoints - into cities and other possible areas of transit. Today, the main feature of the government's surveillance system is a series of 80-to- 180-foot-tall solar-powered towers, which include day and night high-definition cameras, thermal imaging sensors and radar. Coyotes - people who smuggle migrants through the desert - have a simple warning for those they shepherd: "If you can see the towers, the towers can see you."

Our research has examined the relationship between the first generation of surveillance towers, which CBP began deploying in 2006, and the location and rate of mortality in Arizona's desert borderlands. Since 2007, there has been a statistically meaningful shift in the location of human remains toward areas outside the visual reach of the towers. This shift corresponded to a roughly 643 percent increase in the rate of mortality between 2006 and 2020.

This relationship is easy to understand. The Arizona border region is one of the most rugged and dangerous areas in the United States - a space larger than Massachusetts where summertime temperatures routinely hit 120 degrees. There is little water. For migrants, avoiding surveillance often means longer and more difficult routes of travel that accelerate dehydration and extend exposure to the extreme desert environment.

To steer clear of the surveillance towers, people have pushed deeper into the mountains and now hunker down in arroyos and other crevices in the desert for longer periods of time. These conditions increase the likelihood of the body's ability to regulate heat collapsing. As a person's core temperature creeps beyond 104 degrees Fahrenheit, that person will experience cascading effects that include impaired cognition, organ failure and, eventually, death.

Last year set a record for border deaths in Arizona, with the recovery of 226 sets of human remains. Yet despite the fact that, annually, hundreds of people die crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, millions more continue to attempt this hazardous journey every year.

There is a simple reason Arizona border policy is failing: It does not take into account people's motivations for migrating in the first place. Most, if not all, of the people who seek entry into the United States through the desert are out of options to obtain safety for themselves or for their children, to reunite with loved ones in the United States, or to find some other avenue toward a better life. If they could secure these by other means, they would not choose this treacherous journey. As it is, they approach the desert as just one more obstacle to overcome, among many others in their lives.

Over the past 30 years, the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on what is essentially an ineffective enforcement policy. Sinking millions more into a surveillance program involving robotic dogs is senseless.

That money could be better used to help address inefficiencies in the U.S. asylum system. It could be spent to address the root causes of violence, inequality, and political and economic instability in migrants' countries of origin, with investments in infrastructures that would allow people on both sides of the border to not only survive but also thrive.

It's time to call off the dogs and acknowledge the menace of high-tech surveillance in the desert. Any policies that actively lead to the deaths of some of the world's most vulnerable people ought to be abandoned. Programmable pooches might someday do other good in the world, but they have no place along the Arizona border.

OPINIONS ON ANIMALS

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Opinion | Robotic dogs patrolling the U.S. border will not stop migrants. But they may lead to more deaths.

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Geoffrey Boyce is academic director of the Earlham College Border Studies Program in Tucson. Sam Chambers is a researcher in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is experimenting with technology that would allow it to release a new creature into the Arizona desert: robotic dogs.

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Maryama* is just 17 years old, but already she has attempted to migrate from Hargeisa in the Horn of Africa to Europe twice. While most migrants face harrowing journeys, her story can help us understand some of the additional challenges facing young women and girls on the move in the Horn of Africa. She was interviewed as part of a broader study on the situation of children on the move in the Horn of Africa carried out by the Innocenti Office of Research.
The forgotten minority
Conversations about migration are often focused on young men. To a certain extent, this focus is understandable. Although statistics on those who begin the journey are difficult to obtain, we do know that those who arrive in Europe are predominantly male, between 67-73% according to the Pew Research Center. But women are also on the move in significant numbers and their experiences both mirror and differ from those of their male counterparts.
In search of a better life
The first time Maryama left home, she was 13 years old. At the time, she didn't have a "clear vision on how and why. The only thing that I knew was that I wanted to go to Germany because I heard that those who immigrate get money and a better life." Maryama's focus on finding a better life is shared by the majority of young people who participated in this research. For them, a better life means a better job and enhanced educational opportunities.

As Maryama says, "I did not go to school... My family never treated the girls and boys of the family equally, they always gave priority to my brothers, whether to send them to school or other things." Other young women interviewed for this study echoed this sentiment, stating that boys are always given priority in their families. Women in northern Somalia generally have lower levels of education and experience higher rates of unemployment than their male counterparts. For example, 30% of the girls that we interviewed had no education, compared to 12% of boys. In this context, it is unsurprising that lack of education drives young women to migrate.

There are also reasons for leaving that affect women in particular. Maryama left home a second time at 14 years old to avoid being forced into marriage. In her words: "my family was forcing me to marry an old man. I didn't even know him, and I didn't want him, so I decided to leave the country any way I could." While the search for jobs and education are often then most common reasons for leaving, some girls also cited physical abuse within their families as a driver.
Maryama's first journey
Once she decided to migrate, Maryama looked for a smuggler to assist her. "I told some friends whom I knew could get information and contacts because they had friends who had immigrated before. Then a few days later, they told me I had contact and I should get ready." Like many young people interviewed, however, Maryama did not have the funds to travel. She stole some gold earrings and sold them to finance the first part of the trip. The costs at this first stage tend to be small, so selling possessions or stealing small items is a common way to get started.

Maryama got as far as Bosaso in north-eastern Somalia before her father and brothers found her as she was waiting for a boat to take her on to Yemen. "When I got up, I found my father and my brother in the house. I have no idea who told them where I was." They took her home. "It was shocking, of course, but there was no choice but to go back with them."

I am also afraid my brothers may kill me if they hear that I tried to migrate again.

Her story is similar to those of many other young migrants who are stopped mid-journey by relatives. This helps explain why many young people plan their journeys and leave surreptitiously. Most rightly assume that their parents would oppose their decisions and seek to prevent them from leaving if they knew. Many young migrants, both male and female, reported that they were scared of their parents' reactions to their migration and that this discouraged them from reaching out for help. Young women, however, sometimes expressed fear of violence, not just anger and disappointment. In Maryama's words, "My father didn't threaten me. He was so happy to see me alive, but my brothers did threaten and even beat me... I am also afraid my brothers may kill me if they hear that I tried to migrate again." Maryama, like other young woman who seek to leave, also faced stigma in a culture that expects women to stay at home and which can interpret their movement itself as an abandonment of virtue.
A perilous route
The second time she left, Maryama once again found a smuggler through friends, but this time she got much farther, as far as Libya, but faced many more difficulties. The night she left, she says, "my life changed because I started to realize what it meant to be abused, hungry, and thirsty." She took a bus from Hargeisa to Wajaale and then on to Jigjiga in Ethiopia. Here she was held by smugglers for 18 days before they gathered a large enough group to continue to Addis. She stayed in Addis for another ten days. During this time, she says, "we did not have enough to eat or drink and all the men and women slept together in a hall."

From Addis, the group moved on to Sudan. On the way, she faced a danger to which young women are particularly vulnerable - sexual violence. "To reach Sudan we walked for hours in very scary places for five days. We met some guys and they raped some of us. Me, fortunately I wasn't because I was the youngest and shortest one and I pretended to be married to one of the other migrants I was travelling with."

The situation further deteriorated in Libya, where smugglers demanded ransom from her: "Smugglers asked us to pay US$7,000-$10,000. They tortured us whenever money was delayed and my family couldn't avoid paying all this money. Smugglers tortured me, abused me and did whatever they wanted." Eventually she was approached by an NGO that offered to assist her to return.
A new beginning

I called my family, but they wouldn't believe me and told me. 'you are not our daughter because our daughter is in Libya,' and cut the call.... When I came home everyone was shocked because they thought I would never reach them alive.

She returned by road and when she finally arrived back her family greeted her with disbelief, "I called my family, but they wouldn't believe me and told me. 'you are not our daughter because our daughter is in Libya,' and cut the call.... When I came home everyone was shocked because they thought I would never reach them alive."

Maryama is currently being assisted by the General Assistance and Volunteer Organization (GAVO), which is supported by UNICEF, to learn tailoring and improve her livelihood prospects for the future. "My plan in the future is to be a tailor and stylist in the country and produce a very unique product. Good hope came to my life and I'm very happy for it."

Maryama hopes that she can get support to start her own business when she finishes the course. She wishes that others like her can be assisted through initiatives for youth businesses, education, and vocational training. Such efforts can contribute significantly to reintegrating individuals, like Maryama, who are struggling to build a new life for themselves at home. Lives that they might not even have imagined possible before they left.
Maryama's story is one of many encountered in Innocenti's research on the situation of children on the move in the Horn of Africa. The results of the first phase of this research were published in July 2019 as "No Mother Wants her Child to Migrate: Vulnerability of Children on the Move in the Horn of Africa." Olivia Bueno is the lead researcher and author of 'No Mother Wants Her Child to Migrate: Vulnerability of Children on the Move in the Horn of Africa'. She has been working on migration and human rights issues in the Horn and Great Lakes regions of Africa for the last fifteen years. She has consulted with a number of organizations in the region, including local women's and human rights organizations. She is also a co-founder of the International Refugee Rights Initiative, a non-governmental organization based in Kampala and conducting research and advocacy on both the causes and consequences of displacement. She has a Masters degree in International Affairs from the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Additional publications are forthcoming.
* Name changed to protect the privacy of the individual.

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The Forgotten Minority: A Personal Story Sheds Light on the Added Dangers Facing Migrant Girls and Women - Evidence for Action

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Maryama* is just 17 years old, but already she has attempted to migrate from Hargeisa in the Horn of Africa to Europe twice. While most migrants face harrowing journeys, her story can help us understand some of the additional challenges facing young women and girls on the move in the Horn of Africa.

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https://www.borderreport.com/hot-topics/border-culture/climate-change-behind-unprecedented-increase-in-butterfly-species-appearing-in-south-texas-experts-say/

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MISSION, Texas (Border Report) - The National Butterfly Center, with its serene grounds along the Rio Grande in South Texas, is always a big draw for tourists and locals living on the border.

Now, a four-fold increase in butterfly species recently recorded at the facility is drawing even larger crowds. But it has some environmentalists worried that rare butterflies migrating from Central and South America are coming farther north due to global climate change.

A kaleidoscope of butterflies on June 21, 2021, at the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report File Photo)

On New Year's Day, there were a record-breaking 87 species of butterflies spotted at the center. That's a 300% increase from the 20 to 25 species that normally flutter about this time of the year, National Butterfly Center Executive Director Marianna Treviño-Wright told Border Report.

"What we're seeing in terms of the species diversity is we're seeing more tropical butterflies," Treviño-Wright said. "We're seeing butterflies that are normally found in southern Mexico and Central America, which means human beings are not the only climate refugees. The butterflies are moving farther north."

Human beings are not the only climate refugees. The butterflies are moving farther north." Marianna Treviño-Wright, executive director of the National Butterfly Center

In the last days of 2021, the center logged in a variety of butterfly species from the interior of Mexico and beyond. This included the first documented sighting in the United States of a Lugubrious blue skipper on Dec. 28, according to a center report.

Some butterflies recently spotted here hadn't been seen north of the Rio Grande for nearly 30 years, like the Goodson's greenstreak, which was last photographed in the United States in 1994. Also spotted were the spread-winged skipper, the rare pale sicklewing, and the Orion cecropians and pale-spotted leafwings, which are commonly found in Central and South America, the center reports.

A staffer of the National Butterfly Center photographs butterflies on June 21, 2021. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report File Photo)

"Butterflies are a key indicator of climate change," said Dr. Jeffrey Glassberg, president of the North American Butterfly Association, which founded the South Texas center in 2002.

"Not only are their numbers declining in North America as a result of increased aridity due to climate change, but we see butterfly species rapidly ranging northward in response to the increasing warmth, especially in the winter. The relationship between butterflies and a warming world should be of peculiar interest to scientists, evolutionary biologists and climatologists, alike," Glassberg said in a statement.

National Butterfly Center Executive Director Marianna Treviño-Wright is seen on June 21, 2021, at the nonprofit center in Mission, Texas. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report File Photo)

Treviño-Wright said this part of the Rio Grande Valley is on the northernmost edge of the neotropics in North America. To witness so many butterflies travel thousands of miles from their homelands, she said, is a scary indicator that they are trying to escape dangerous warm weather that threatens their food and water sources.

"They're trying to get away from the aridity, the dryness and the heat ... the drought and the high temperatures that are wreaking havoc on Central and South America," she said.

Like many species, a change in their habitat can affect their ability to reproduce and their overall numbers.

A Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is pictured at the Sanctuary of El Rosario, Ocampo municipality, Michoacan state, Mexico, on February 3, 2020. (Photo by ENRIQUE CASTRO/AFP via Getty Images)

A study by the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund found that "monarchs are highly sensitive to weather and climate: They depend on environmental cues - temperature in particular - to trigger reproduction, migration, and hibernation."

The butterfly species that have made it across the border to the Rio Grande Valley did so just as the region is green and lush after an exceptionally wet November when three times the average monthly rainfall fell. And it is several degrees warmer than normal right now.

"Rain and heat are perfect for breeding butterflies," Treviño-Wright said.

But extreme weather could force them to keep moving farther north.

Last year the Rio Grande Valley experienced dramatic weather swings.

It began with a statewide freeze last February that in South Texas that killed thousands of plants and butterflies in various lifecycle stages.

The National Butterfly Center is on the banks of the Rio Grande south of Mission, Texas. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report File Photo)

The months of June and July were among the wettest on record, National Weather Service Meteorologist Barry Goldsmith told Border Report.

And they were followed by higher-than-normal temperatures that lasted from September through December and included several record-breaking days in the high 80s in 2021.

The center recorded 92 degrees on New Year's Day, which is a record.

The average temperature for this time of year should be in the low 70s, according to the National Weather Service.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at ssanchez@borderreport.com.

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Climate change behind unprecedented increase in butterfly species appearing in South Texas, experts say

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MISSION, Texas (Border Report) - The National Butterfly Center, with its serene grounds along the Rio Grande in South Texas, is always a big draw for tourists and locals living on the border. Now, a four-fold increase in butterfly species recently recorded at the facility is drawing even larger crowds.

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whats happening at the us mexico border 

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whats happening at the us mexico border 

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What’s happening at the U.S.-Mexico border in 7 charts

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The U.S. Border Patrol reported more than 1.6 million encounters with migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border in the 2021 fiscal year.

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We live a world of borders and walls. In addition to the massive and expensive barrier on long stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border, in the 23 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, 26 other new walls and fences have gone up on political borders around the world. These walls are built by both totalitarian regimes and democracies, including India, Thailand, Israel, South Africa, and the European Union. Invariably, the barriers are justified in the language of security-the country must be protected from the terrorists, drug cartels, insurgents, or suicide bombers lurking on the other side.

Despite the external focus of these justifications, in most instances these walls and fences are actually the result of the internal politics of the state that builds them. There are three specific reasons for constructing a border wall: establishing sovereignty over ungoverned or unruly lands; protecting the wealth of the state and population; and protecting cultural practices within the state from the possible influence of other value systems possessed by immigrants. The decision to build the 664-mile barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, although often presented as primarily in response to drug-related violence and terrorism, is largely due to these internal factors.

The desire to establish clear sovereign authority over the state's territory is the first factor that underlies the construction of a border barrier. Although we often imagine the territorial outline of countries as sharply drawn lines where the control of one state ends and another begins, most borders on the ground belie this simplicity. The idea that borders (or rivers or coastlines) are lines is a convenience of cartography that is established on the ground many years after a map is drawn, if at all. The oldest political borders in Europe, for example, are only a few hundred years old, and most were established more recently than that. Before the 1600s, most states did not recognize each other's sovereign authority over a territory, and the technological advances in cartography that allowed fixed borders and territories to be represented had not been achieved. Consequently, even the simple idea that states have clearly defined territories that are marked by a linear border is a very recent development.

The contemporary U.S.-Mexico border was established on maps at the end of the U.S.-Mexican War by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. ¹ The war settled which territories the expansion-minded United States could claim and transferred almost half of Mexico's territory to the United- States. The last sections of the border were finalized with the Gadsden Purchase in 1854, which secured mining rights and a better route for a railroad connection to California. At the time, the territory was part of the United States in name only and, despite the enormous land area, was populated by about 100,000 Mexicans and 200,000 Native Americans. ² Over the intervening years, sovereign authority over these lands was established by moving Anglo populations onto the land and by violently suppressing any resistance. Land surveying, creating property maps, and the deployment of police forces resignified the landscape. Yet the line existed on the map and in the population's geographic imagination only inchoately, as the practices and performances of sovereignty slowly inscribed the different territories onto the landscape.

This process accelerated in the 1990s as funding for border security increased substantially and the idea of marking the imagined line with a physical barrier took hold. When the Border Patrol was established in 1924, it was tiny and remained underfunded for decades. In 1992, there were 3,555 agents at the U.S.-Mexico border, but by 2010 there were over 20,100. ³ These changes have both practical and symbolic effects on the hardening of the border. The additional agents play a practical enforcement role while the fence project, which passed Congress in 2006, is much more symbolically significant. Walls and fences are the most efficient way to mark territorial differences on the ground because they take the abstract idea of a territory and materialize it. The construction of the barrier is another step in the process of reimaging these formerly Native American and Mexican lands as firmly part of the territory of the United States. By physically inscribing the line in the landscape, the wall brings the border into being and visually demonstrates where U.S. territory ends and Mexican territory begins.

The second internal factor that results in the construction of a wall or fence on a border is the presence of a poorer country on the other side. In previous eras, political borders served primarily as either military defensive lines where one army prevented the movement of another or as markers of different government regimes where one set of laws and taxes or one cultural system stopped and another began. Over the 20th century, the practice of absolute sovereignty over a bounded territory produced substantial wealth inequalities globally, which increased the desire of many people to move either to avoid deteriorating conditions in their home state or to seek better economic opportunities elsewhere. ⁴ These movements, along with the possibility of hostile people or items passing into the state, resulted in a much more substantial focus on borders as a location to prevent the unauthorized movement of people.

Just as we often imagine most borders as the sharp lines depicted on maps, we also imagine that historically most borders were fenced and fortified, but this is not the case. The older purposes of borders as defensive military lines or administrative divisions do not necessitate a wall or fence. Fences do not deter tanks and airplanes, and administrative divisions between peaceful neighbors do not require an expensive barrier. The changing purpose for borders is evident in the sheer number of new barriers built in the past 20 years. Twenty-seven have been built since 1998, compared with 11 during the entire Cold War period from 1945 until 1990. Furthermore, several of those Cold War barriers were quite short including the U.S. fence with Cuba at Guantánamo Bay and the fence between Gibraltar and Spain.

Not only are the new barriers longer than in the past, but many are built along peaceful borders. The significant characteristic that most of these borders share is that they mark a sharp wealth discontinuity. ⁵ For example, the average annual per capita GDP (in 2010 U.S. dollars) of the countries that have built barriers since the fall of the Berlin Wall is $14,067; the average for the countries on the other side of these barriers is $2,801. The U.S. barrier on the Mexican border fits this pattern. Although the Canadian border is longer and certainly more porous (the Border Patrol estimated in 2009 that it had effective control over less than 1% of the Canadian border versus 35% of the Mexican border), the debates about fencing the border focused only on Mexico. ⁶ The United States' per capita GDP in 2010 was $47,000, Canada's was $39,000, and Mexico's was $14,000.

The final internal factor that plays a role in the decision to build a fence or wall on a political border is the fear that population movements will irreversibly change the way of life inside the state. In the United States, concerns about the threat that immigrant values pose are as old as the country itself. At different points in history, the Irish, the Chinese, and the Italians were all described as posing a grave threat to a particular version of what it meant to be an "American." Today, these debates revolve around both Muslims and Latino immigrants who, anti-immigrant activists argue, bring alternative social codes and do not assimilate into the mainstream of U.S. society. The fence on the border symbolizes the hardened and fixed borderline that marks a clear distinction between the territories where particular people belong.

The construction of a barrier on the border simultaneously legitimates and intensifies the internal exclusionary practices of the sovereign state. It legitimates exclusion by providing a material manifestation of the abstract idea of sovereignty, which brings the claim of territorial difference into being. The barrier also intensifies these exclusionary practices, because once the boundary is marked and "the container" of the state takes form, the perception of the difference between the two places becomes stronger. This process is evident in new restrictive immigration laws at the state level in Alabama and Arizona as well as in the protests and vandalism directed toward proposed Islamic cultural centers in New York and Tennessee. By demonstrating sovereign control, the state simultaneously reifies authority over that territory and defines the limits of the people that belong there. These perceived differences then fuel more passionate feelings of belonging to the in-group and distinction from the other on the outside.

The U.S. fence on the Mexican border should be understood both in terms of the enhanced enforcement capabilities of the government and in the assertion of where the state has authority and who should be allowed in the state's territory. The United States built the barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border to define its sovereign authority over its territory, to protect the economic privileges of its population, and to protect a particular way of life from other people who are perceived to have different value systems. Rather than a barrier against terrorism and cartel violence, it is a performance of the United States' territory and boundaries.

Reece Jones is Associate Professor and Chair of Graduate Studies in the Department of Geography at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Parts of this article are excerpted from his new book, Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India, and Israel (Zed Books, 2012).

1. Joseph Werne, The Imaginary Line: A History of the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 1848-57 (Texas Christian University Press, 2007).

2. Joseph Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on "Illegals" and the Remaking of the US-Mexico Boundary (Routledge, 2010), 26-8; Kelly Lytle Hernández, Migra! A History of the US Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010), 21-2.

3. Chad C. Haddal, Border Security: The Role of the Border Patrol (Washington DC: Congressional Research Services, 2010), 13.

4. John Agnew, Globalization and Sovereignty (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 1-45; Richard E. Baldwin, Phillip Martin, and Gianmarco Ottaviano, "Global Income Divergence, Trade, and Industrialization: The Geography of Growth Take-Offs." Journal of Economic Growth 6, no. 1 (2001): 5-37.

5. Stéphane Rosière and Reece Jones, "Teichopolitics: Reconsidering Globalization Through the Role of Walls and Fences," Geopolitics 17, no. 1 (2012): 217-34.

6. Todd Owen, Congressional Testimony, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (July 9, 2009), 3.
Read the rest of NACLA's Fall 2012 issue: "#Radical Media: Communication Unbound."

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We live a world of borders and walls. In addition to the massive and expensive barrier on long stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border, in the 23 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, 26 other new walls and fences have gone up on political borders around the world.

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Groups on both sides track how Arizona’s new border wall disrupts wildlife migration -  Border Report

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Groups on both sides track how Arizona’s new border wall disrupts wildlife migration -  Border Report

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https://www.borderreport.com/news/groups-on-both-sides-track-how-arizonas-new-border-wall-disrupts-wildlife-migration/

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Groups on both sides track how Arizona’s new border wall disrupts wildlife migration

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A nonprofit U.S. animal conservation organization has paired with a Mexican counterpart to document and track wildlife whose habitat has been split by a border wall that is being built in southeast…

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Effect of Border Policy on Population Distribution.

Migration flows obtained with our model reproduce the main known international patterns well, with most developed regions (e.g., United States and Western Europe) being net destination regions and developing regions (e.g., Sub-Saharan Africa and Central America) being net origin regions over this century. Overall, migration flows modify each region's population size by up to 0.9%. This is a significant amount-for comparison, migrant flows into the United States in 2010 constituted 0.7% of the American population. For information, we also provide results without climate change effect-that is, without climate change damages affecting the economy (SI Appendix, Fig. S12). We find that climate change affects migration numbers only marginally, increasing worldwide international migration by 0.3 to 1.1% in 2100 compared to no climate change at the same period, depending on the border policy and development and climate scenario considered. For our medium scenario (Shared Socioeconomic Pathway [SSP]2-Representative Concentration Pathway [RCP]4.5) with current border policy, this corresponds to an increase in global migration flows in 2100 of about 75,000 people.

Furthermore, we find that border policy itself has a clear quantitative effect on net migration in all regions. In most regions, closing borders between Global North and Global South has similar effects to closing all borders, which signals that most migration for those regions has taken place between Global North and Global South. Yet for some (e.g., Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East), most migration happens within either Global North or Global South. Note that for the Small Island States and South America, border policy also has a qualitative effect: Closing borders between North and South makes them become net destination regions. Conversely, Canada and Japan and South Korea become net origin regions, as their geographic remoteness makes them a rare destination choice for most northern regions (SI Appendix, Fig. S3).

Effect of Border Policy on Income per Capita (after Remittances).

Our model endogenously calculates the share of income that a migrant sends back to the origin region as remittances (SI Appendix, Fig. S4). In 2015, remittance shares range from from 8 to 110%, depending on the migration corridor; note that remittance shares are higher than 100% (e.g., in corridors ending in South Asia) when immigrants have a higher income than the (low) average per capita income at destination. Yet for all regions and all development-climate scenarios, the share of income sent as remittance decreases over time as regions sustain economic convergence. Scenarios presenting a stronger convergence between regions (SSP1 and SSP5) provide the strongest decrease; conversely the scenarios presenting weaker convergence (SSP3 and SSP4) witness the weakest decrease.

Our model also allows us to obtain explicit remittance flows between regions (SI Appendix, Fig. S5). Unsurprisingly, more remittances are exchanged as borders are more open‡. Most regions that are destinations for migration are net sending remittances regions, and vice versa. An interesting exception is Canada, which when borders are closed between Global North and South becomes both a net origin region for migrants and a net sending region for remittances, as its emigrants move to areas that are not much richer and/or present unattractive remittance sending possibilities, while its immigrants send back to their home regions more substantial remittances. This exception holds for all climate change and development scenarios, implying that border policy plays a more important role than either economic development or climate change in our model for Canada.

We further look at the effect of border policy on income, once remittances have been transferred between regions. Fig. 1 ( Top Left) shows region-specific per capita income levels by the end of the century if borders stay as easy or difficult to cross as they are currently. We then compare results with the three other border policy scenarios to this baseline of current borders. Our results are consistent with the literature on the more general effect of border policy on income in origin and destination ( 19⇓ ⇓ - 22), regardless of the climate change context. In particular, we find that opening borders more would strongly benefit Central America, the Small Island States, and Southeast Asia-increasing their gross domestic product (GDP) per capita level by up to 2.6, 2.4, and 2.1%-as these regions would receive more remittances from wealthier regions than they send to poorer regions ( Fig. 1, Top Right). Conversely, China as well as those regions would be most hit by closing all borders, with a decrease in per capita income of 2.0 and 1.8%, respectively ( Fig. 1, Bottom Left). Closing borders between North and South would hurt the Small Island States and China in particular, reducing their GDP per capita by 2.0 and 1.9%; indeed those regions, among the richest in the Global South by the end of the century, become sources of more remittances sent to other southern regions ( Fig. 1, Bottom Right).

Effect of Border Policy on Exposure and Vulnerability.

FUND explicitly features different types of impacts from climate change on the economy ( 15). We use the damages to GDP ratio in each region as a measure of exposure and vulnerability to climate change impacts. We find that this ratio tends to be higher in developing regions, regardless of the scenarios of future development and of mitigation policy considered (SI Appendix, Fig. S8).

As our key contribution, we analyze in which direction and to what extent migrants change their level of exposure and vulnerability when they move from one region to another. Results are displayed in Fig. 2. For each region, we highlight whether migrants who leave that region tend to move to an area where they find themselves more exposed and vulnerable (positive change in exposure and vulnerability) or less exposed and vulnerable (negative change) than in their home region. We present results for 2100, for all five SSP-RCP combinations and for the three scenarios of border policy that do allow migrants to move.

Crucially, we find that most migrants-in particular from developing countries-tend to move to areas where they are less exposed and vulnerable than where they came from. This happens not because they intentionally move into less dangerous areas (such intentions are not captured by this model), but because destination regions-wealthier-also happen to be less exposed and vulnerable. This result complements previous descriptive findings of correlative evidence between climate vulnerability and migration based on past data ( 8). We show that differences in exposure and vulnerability levels across regions can be substantial, up to 10 percentage points of GDP for SSP3. Therefore, closing borders would increase the number of people more severely exposed and vulnerable to climate change impacts, by trapping them in areas where they are more exposed and vulnerable than where they would end up if they had the possibility to move more freely. On the other hand, reducing inequality between countries would also decrease the need and benefit to use international migration as an adaptation solution; hence considerations of unequal levels of development across regions are crucial to understanding international migration flows in conjunction with climate change damages.

Note that this finding omits two relevant effects of migration. First, migration changes the demographic profiles of both origin and destination populations, as international migrants tend to be young, working-age adults and healthier than the destination population ( 1, 5). Thus, they are potentially less at risk from certain impacts of climate change (e.g., on health), which reduces vulnerability further at destination, while increasing it at origin. Second, exposure and vulnerability are spatially differentiated within a given region. Here, our result is based on regional average exposure and vulnerability levels in origin and destination regions. Yet migrants-when allowed-might move from areas where they are less exposed and vulnerable than the origin regional average into areas (e.g., urban informal settlements, coastal megacities) where they are more exposed and vulnerable than the destination regional average ( 1). In such a case, migrating would potentially increase their exposure and vulnerability to climate change impacts. However, while some data are available both on migrants' specific locations and on specific exposure and vulnerability levels within a region for some destination regions (the United States in particular), to our knowledge similar data are not available on both aspects in origin regions. We acknowledge that these are limitations to our findings and consequently are measured in our conclusions.

Effect of Border Policy on CO 2 Emissions and Global Temperature Increase.

Integrating migration and remittance dynamics in an IAM enables us to look at the effect of border policy and resulting migration and remittance flows on greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, as discussed above migration flows do modify each region's population size by up to 0.9%. Furthermore, we assume that migrants, once in the destination region, instantaneously adopt the local consumption behavior and average carbon footprint per unit of income (we assume their income per capita to be the larger of origin and mean of origin and destination income; Materials and Methods). Although consumption behaviors of migrants might differ from host communities for activities with particular cultural components (e.g., cooking), the literature suggests that income levels are the strongest determinant of individuals' carbon footprints ( 23, 24); thus we consider our assumption reasonable.

Population changes and income transfers in the form of remittances as a result of migration do generate modified regional emissions levels (SI Appendix, Fig. S9). In particular, we find that opening borders more would increase emissions in most destination regions through increased population size and decrease emissions in most origin regions as income level increases through remittances do not compensate population decreases. The opposite happens when closing borders.

However, we find that such differences in emissions at the regional level have a moderate effect on global emissions and hence almost no effect on overall temperature change over the 21st century. Fig. 3 illustrates global CO 2 emissions and overall temperature increase for our four scenarios of border policy, for each of the five SSP-RCP combinations. While the development/climate scenarios clearly lead to different emissions and temperature outcomes, border policy affects global emissions, but barely overall temperature change. Furthermore, scenarios for closing all borders or closing borders only between Global North and Global South are almost perfectly superposed and indistinguishable.

Migration and Remittance Flows: A Gravity Model.

In a first step, we model migration dynamics. We focus on international, long-term migration. Major influences on such type of migration tend to revolve around three categories: economic opportunities (e.g., possibility of earning higher income, of sending remittances back home); proximity, whether geographic, political (e.g., shared colonial history), or cultural (e.g., common official language); and migration costs, among which border policy is a key factor. Gravity models ( 4, 25, 26) bring these push-and-pull factors into one framework.

Here we employ such a model and express bilateral migrant flows as a function of population sizes and per capita incomes levels of origin and destination regions, as well as geodesic distances between regions' centers of population d i s t . We also include a set of bilateral characteristics of the origin/destination pair indicating the share ρ of each migrant's income sent as remittance (as defined in m e l e n t e=∑ o m o v . e a v=∑ d m o v , while the number of immigrants is given by x p(e x p(ϵ o d )) × e x p() × e x p() × . The total number of migrants leaving a given country at time t is given by o v= × p o p o  × p o p d  × y p c o  × y p c d  × d i s t o d [1] Eq. 3); the cost of sending said remittances, ϕ; whether the two regions share a common official language, ψ; and an implicit representation of border policy between the two regions, π (see Border Policy Scenarios). Our resulting gravity model is encapsulated in Eq. 1:

To model how many migrants send remittances, we compute a state variable, s t m o s−1 t>−μ[e n t e(t−(t )+μ(t ))]. In terms of amount of money sent as remittances, we assume that each migrant sends a corridor-specific share of income ρ to the origin region, for a corridor-specific cost, ϕ. While we take ϕ as exogenous (see = ×r−∑ p s t o d d e a d m i g c o s=∑ d  h b o x* m o v h b o x* m a x 2 ,V S . [5] Note that we account for endogeneity issues in the following ways. First, there is potential reverse causality between remittances and migration: Remittances are not only the result of migrant stocks, they also drive migration decision. We account for both effects in our combined gravity and remittance model: Remittances increase with migrant numbers, but decrease when differences in income between origin and destination are reduced. Conversely, migration increases with the proportion of income sent as remittance, but decreases when differences in income between origin and destination are reduced, e.g., through remittances (see ref. e a d m i=∑ d  h b o x* m o v c h b o x* m a x 2 ,y p (1−). Finally, we consider a corridor-specific risk of dying while attempting to migrate, δ. To compare such migrants' deaths to other damages from climate change, we use the value of statistical life (VSL) ( e∑ d s t o c h b o x* m a x 2 ,y p (1−) [4]  y p(t )  × y p(t )  × e x p() × e x p(). [3] Furthermore, we assume that a migrant's income at destination is the larger amount of two quantities: mean of origin and destination per capita incomes and origin per capita income. This assumption illustrates the effect of cases where immigrants from lower-income countries are not able to reach average income levels at destination and cases where immigrants from higher-income countries ("expatriates") earn significantly higher incomes than the average income at destination. Note that we assume that immigration does not modify destination income per capita levels ( t o c=s t o c(t−1)+m o v [2] v e , and decreases over time once migrants pass away. This duration is computed as life expectancy at birth, λ, in the destination region minus median age of migrants at time of migration, μ. We derive remittance flows by assuming that only first-generation migrants send money back to their origin region in the form of remittances, for the duration of their life. This assumption coarsely illustrates the few empirical findings of the migration literature focusing on second-generation remittances, suggesting that second-generation migrants are significantly less likely to send remittances to their parents and send smaller amounts ( o c k , that keeps count of how many migrants from one region are present in another region at a given time ( Eq. 2). This bilateral "stock" of migrants is initiated as described below, accumulates over time with new arrivals 27):Calibration of Other Migration Parameters), we model ρ as a function of per capita income levels of origin and destination regions and of the corridor-specific cost. Our resulting model describing the share of a migrant's income sent as remittance is featured in Eq. 3. Corridor-specific residuals, ϵ, are then used in our gravity model featured in Eq. 1: 28). Total net flows into a given region are computed as the difference between remittances received from all emigrants' destinations d and remittances sent by all immigrants to their origin p, again notwithstanding corridor-specific costs of sending remittances ϕ ( Eq. 4): 29).§ Here, we use time- and region-specific VSL endogenously computed by the IAM ( Eq. 5). We use the migrant value for VSL, following our assumption of migrant income at destination, as a migrant heading for a higher income would have a greater willingness to pay for safety than if the migrant stayed in the country of origin¶ : 7 for an empirical example in rural Mexico). Second, endogeneity can arise between remittances and economic development: Remittance amounts are driven by the level of development both at destination and at origin, but also affect levels of development at origin (recipient) countries. We also take this effect into account by displaying GDP levels after remittances have been transferred ( Fig. 1). Third, there is potential reverse causality between migration and economic development: Migration is driven by absolute and relative levels of economic development, but also affects development levels at destination. We account for that effect coarsely, by assuming that immigration does not modify destination income per capita levels and hence overall increases income levels (see above). This limitation is an inevitable consequence of the rather stylized fundamental structure of IAMs.

Modeling: Including Migration Dynamics in an IAM.

In a second step, we include our migration and remittances dynamics model in an existing IAM. We choose FUND ( 15), as it presents useful features for this project: some regional disaggregation (16 regions, 2 of them representing one country each: United States and Canada; SI Appendix, Table S1) and a sectoral quantification of damages (12 impact sectors). FUND takes exogenous scenarios of key economic variables as inputs (population growth, income per capita growth, growths of the energy intensity of the economy and of the carbon intensity of energy) and then perturbs these with estimates of the cost of climate policy and the impacts of climate change. The 12 climate change impacts are monetized and include those on agriculture, forestry, human health, energy consumption, water resources, and unmanaged ecosystems, as well as those arising from sea-level rise and storms. FUND has a constant income elasticity of damages, yet each impact sector has a different functional form and is calculated separately for each of the 16 regions# ( 33). Note that while FUND requires an exogenous input scenario of GDP growth, part of the climate change damages in one period reduces the production of the next period instead of reducing only the consumption in the present period.

We use a modular approach: This IAM being constructed as an ensemble of components∥ , we create a new migration component and plug it into FUND ( Fig. 4). Importantly, migration and climate change impacts interact only indirectly through the income channel: Migration changes population distribution and generates income transfers between regions, which modifies each region's emissions profile and damages. Conversely, climate change generates region-specific damages and hence modifies relative income levels-a driver of our migration dynamics model. Hence, in our model income is determined by region-specific endogenous growth, climate change damages, and remittances.

Note that while FUND runs for the period 1950 to 3000 in yearly time steps, we make the migration dynamics explicit starting in 2015 and present results for the period 2015 to 2100.

Gravity Estimation.

We estimate our gravity equation by ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression ( Eq. 6). For the estimation, it is assumed that π is constant over time and calibrated so that ∀(o,d)l n(m o v e o d)=l n(β 0 )+β 1 l n+β 2 l n+e x p()++++ε o d t . [6] We perform the estimation at the country level. Bilateral migrant flows data are derived from 1990 to 2015 stock estimates from the World Bank, available for 5-y periods, using two methods of derivation: ref.   +β 4 l n+β 5 l n+β 7 l n(d i s t o d)  π o,d=1 (we will later vary this assumption by using different scenarios of border policy; see Border Policy Scenarios): 34, as collected in ref. 35, and ref. 36.†† Data on independent variables are available from the World Bank; for a detailed description of data on remittance characteristics, see Calibration of Other Migration Parameters. Note that migration time series are nonstationary by nature. To ensure that we are capturing underlying trends in the data, we use year fixed effects in the estimation. From our gravity model specification, we also capture trends related to convergence or divergence in economic development levels, as well as rough demographic trends (changes in population sizes). Yet we do not explicitly capture trends linked to geopolitical events. This limits our ability to fully capture nonstationarity.

The resulting estimation is presented in Table 1. Results imply that migration flows between two countries increase with origin population size and with the existence of a common language and decrease with distance between countries, as suggested in other studies using similar models (e.g., ref. 25). Migration flows also tend to increase with destination population size and per capita GDP. The effects of bilateral characteristics (distance, remittances shares and costs, common official language) are as we would expect. Unsurprisingly, remittance costs reduce migration-yet the effect is not significant. Conversely, the variable measuring remittances as share of income has a positive effect on migration, hinting at the effects of migration networks on the persistence of migration flows: People tend to move to areas where strong remittance traditions with their home countries exist. Alternatively, if the migration is a collective household decision, this positive effect might reflect the desirability to the household as a whole of the extra income. We provide a first robustness check by estimating parameters using data from ref. 36 ( Table 1, column 2) and find that our projections are virtually not affected by the data source.

Note that including origin and destination fixed effects in our estimation would imply that we are considering effects that are inferred from the deviations of migration flows from origin- and destination-specific long-run equilibria and as such can be thought of as summarizing short- to medium-run elasticities. The effects on changes in the long-run equilibria, on the other hand, are factored into the parameter estimates of the model without these country fixed effects. For that reason we consider the model with only year fixed effects to be the more appropriate for the projection exercise. In addition, projecting country fixed effects would lead to flow differences across countries remaining constant in the long run, hiding potential long-term effects of our socioeconomic covariates. For information, we provide estimations with country fixed effects on both datasets in SI Appendix, Table S2.

We provide further robustness checks in SI Appendix. First, we use region-level fixed effects (SI Appendix, Table S3). We find that the magnitude of coefficients somewhat changes, but neither their sign nor their significance. We do not find the use of regional fixed effects appropriate here, as such a specification would underestimate the effect of worldwide economic convergence-including between regions-featured in some of our scenarios by the end of the century, on migration flows. Second, we perform the estimation separately on low-income and non-low-income origin countries to determine whether migration trends are biased by low-income countries in a way that would not be relevant anymore once those countries reach higher levels of development over this century (SI Appendix, Table S4). We find that coefficients are relatively similar using both origin country groups. Third, we constrain the origin and destination income per capita terms to have the same coefficient with opposite signs, as in ref. 17, ‡‡(SI Appendix, Table S5). We find that the overall fit is not as good, which suggests that origin and destination income terms per capita affect migration to different extents, not only in different directions. Fourth, we include the effect of income in other countries than the origin and destination countries considered, also as in ref. 17 (SI Appendix, Table S6). We find that it has little effect on other coefficients. Fifth, we add a squared term on origin income per capita, to test whether its effect on migration flows changes direction above a certain income level (SI Appendix, Table S7). We find that it does not, as the squared-term coefficient is positive. Sixth, we include regional exposure and vulnerability levels in our gravity model (SI Appendix, Table S8). We find no robust effect of origin exposure level on migration flows and some positive effect of destination exposure: For the estimation period (1990 to 2015), migrants tended to move to areas that were among the more exposed to the limited impacts from climate change witnessed during this period. This suggests some spurious correlation between exposure and some omitted variable for this time period.

We then use the estimated coefficients of Table 1, column 1 in our migration model at the regional level. Remittance parameters ρ and ϕ are transposed from country to region level as described in the Migration and Remittance Flows: A Gravity Model and the Calibration of Other Migration Parameters, respectively. Distances between regions are calculated as Haversine distances between centers of population of regions, computed as arithmetic means of coordinates of a region's countries' capitals weighted by 2010 country-level population. The presence of a common official language between two regions becomes a coefficient between 0 and 1, weighting all dummies for country pairs of the two regions with migration flows between the regions in the period 2010 to 2015 from ref. 34.

Finally, to realistically reflect each migration corridor's specificity, we incorporate pair-specific residuals and time fixed effects of the last periods (one time fixed effect per period) from Eq. 6 in our migration model. More precisely, we add said residuals averaged over the last three 5-y periods (2000 to 2015) to our gravity model ( Eq. 7) (such residuals are plotted in SI Appendix, Fig. S1): m with r e=1 3 ∑ t∈2000:5:2015 [(+ε o d t ). Most corridors present residuals that are relatively constant over time, but some do vary significantly. We provide a robustness check in o v* =(m o v(t )+r e) h b o x*  [7] SI Appendix, Figs. S9 and S10 by performing a sensitivity analysis using only residuals of the last 5-y period (2010 to 2015). Results stay qualitatively similar.

Remittance Share Estimation.

We also estimate our remittance share equation by OLS regression ( Eq. 8). Our parameter ρ is defined as the share of income that a migrant sends as remittance, which in theory can vary both in absolute and in relative terms with income levels at origin and destination countries. Hence we estimate both ρ and l=l=y p c m i g,o d =m a x(()/2,y p) as in r e m i/(y p c m i g,o d  h b o x* s t o c) , with n()=l n(y p)+l n ++. [8] We perform the estimation at the country level. The share of income sent as remittance is computed as follows: δ 1 ′ l n(y p)+δ 2 ′ l n +δ 3 ′ +ϵ o d′ n for robustness purposes: Eq. 4. For that purpose, we use bilateral remittance matrices available from the World Bank. Those are estimates of amounts in dollars sent between countries as remittances in a given year; they are estimated by the World Bank using migrant stocks as well as host and origin country incomes. We also use data on bilateral estimates of migrant stocks from the World Bank and on per capita income also from the World Bank. We use the last year for which all three datasets are available, which is 2017. For independent variables, we use data on income per capita from the World Bank, as well as data on the cost of sending remittances (expressed in percentage of amount sent) available from the World Bank's database Remittance Prices Worldwide ( 39), all for the year 2017.

The resulting estimation is presented in Table 2. Results suggest that the proportion of a migrant's income sent as remittance increases with the gap in per capita GDP between origin and destination as represented by the income ratios (see columns 2 and 4) and decreases with destination per capita GDP. High remittance costs tend to take place in corridors sending high shares of remittances (columns 1 and 2), likely the most profitable corridors for intermediaries harvesting these costs. Yet, unsurprisingly, higher remittance costs reduce remittance shares (columns 3 and 4) although this effect is not significant. Finally, the specification in l n provides a better fit, and hence we use it for our remittance model.

We then use the estimated coefficients of Table 2, column 3 in our remittance model at the regional level. Remittance parameter ϕ is transposed from country to region level as described below. Residuals ϵ, used both in our remittance and in our gravity models ( Eqs 1 and 3), are aggregated at the region level as described in SI Appendix.

Calibration of Other Migration Parameters.

Other remittance parameters are calibrated as follows. First, duration of migrants' stay in the destination region is computed as the difference between life expectancy λ in the destination region and age of migrants at time of migration μ, both calibrated using SSP projections available at the country level. We assume constant parameters after 2100 (note that here we show only results for 2015 to 2100, so this assumption does not affect our results). For both parameters, we transpose from country to region level by weighting countries within each region by 2015 population size, using data from the Wittgenstein Center ( 40). As our migration dynamics model starts only in 2015, we also include an initial stock of migrants for that year. For that purpose, we use data on bilateral migrant stocks from the World Bank for 2017, the closest available year, and assign an age distribution built as the average of two distributions: the age distribution of migrants at time of migration in the period 2015 to 2020 and the age distribution of the overall destination population in the same period, both sourced from the SSP population projections.

Second, we estimate the share of a migrant's income ρ sent as remittances as described above. We also assume that the cost ϕ of sending remittances is constant over time and across the SSP narrative, but specific to the origin/destination pair. We calibrate this parameter using data on the cost of sending remittances (expressed in percentage of amount sent) available from the World Bank's database Remittance Prices Worldwide ( 39) for the year 2017. We transpose it from country to region level by weighting migration corridors within each region by remittance flows. Remittance cost values range from 2 to 17% of the amount sent as remittance, depending on the corridor.

Finally, the risk of dying while attempting to migrate δ is also assumed constant over time and across the SSP narrative, but specific to the origin/destination pair. We calculate this risk as the ratio of missing migrants to the migrant flows on that journey. We calibrate this parameter using data on missing migrants for the period 2014 to 2018 from the International Organization for Migration, as well as data on migration flows between regions in the period 2010 to 2015 from ref. 34.

Input Scenarios: The SSPs without Migration.

FUND requires input scenarios of population, economic, energy, and carbon intensity growth. While default scenarios in FUND are based on the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios developed for the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios published in 2000, we use the more recently developed SSPs. The SSPs provide quantified projections of, among other indicators, population, GDP, final energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions along five narratives of future world development.

However, those SSP narratives include built-in assumptions on international migration ( 41), explicit only in population projections ( 42) ( Fig. 5). Thus, using the original SSP quantifications as input to our migration dynamics model coupled to FUND would lead us to count migration twice: once in the input scenarios and once in the migration model itself.

To avoid double counting of migration, we use versions of those scenarios without migration, which we developed in a previous project.§§ We proceeded as follows: First, population projections for zero migration were developed by Samir KC¶¶ using a demographic model of population dynamics. Second, we developed GDP projections for zero migration, using a similar gravity model with remittances to trace the migration effect on GDP. Third, we derived projections of final energy consumption and emissions for zero migration by assuming, for a given SSP narrative, that migration dynamics do not affect the energy consumption, respectively emissions path along GDP per capita levels. Note that for the energy consumption and emissions projections, we select relevant combinations of SSPs with climate scenarios, the Representative Concentration Pathways, among the ones selected for the upcoming IPCC Assessment Report ( Fig. 6): SSP1-RCP1.9, SSP2-RCP4.5, SSP3-RCP7.0, SSP4-RCP6.0, and SSP5-RCP8.5.

Furthermore, to project consistent mitigation costs, we use carbon price projections corresponding to the respective SSP-RCP combinations selected. These projections are computed using the process-based IAMs described in ref. 45. They feature narrative-specific global carbon prices. We illustrate those carbon price projections in SI Appendix, Fig. S2.

Finally, as FUND runs for the period 1950 to 3000 in yearly time steps while our SSP projections are available for the period 2015 to 2100 in 5-y time steps, we extend the projections as described in Table 3.

Border Policy Scenarios.

In a final step, we consider various scenarios for border policy. The use of scenarios for this key parameter appears justified by the highly perilous character of border policy prediction over such a timescale. Note that border policies are generally effective at controlling border crossings at their targeted locations, yet can lead to unintended effects on population movement that can limit their effectiveness. The DEMIG## project identified four types of such effects, namely spatial substitution where migration takes place through other routes or other destinations altogether, categorical substitution through other legal or illegal channels, intertemporal substitution precipitating migration in expectation of future stricter policies, and reverse flow substitution through the interruption of return migration encouraging permanent moves ( 50). The scenarios we use here, highly stylized, are not meant to provide realistic descriptions of actual border enforcement on the ground, but rather to capture the plausible magnitude of border policy effects on various outcomes.

We define four different scenarios for border policy and illustrate then by varying values for π in our gravity equation ( Eq. 1). First, we use as baseline a scenario keeping current borders as easy or difficult to migrate through as they are today. Second, we consider a scenario where borders are closed between all regions and hence where no migration is possible. Third, we look at a scenario where borders are more open than today, allowing doubling of migration flows. Fourth, we analyze a scenario for which borders are as open as today within the Global North and the Global South, but closed between. The corresponding values for π in Eq. 1 are as follows:

* Current borders: ∀o,d  =1

* Closed borders between all regions: ∀o,d  =0

* More open borders: ∀o,d  =2

* Borders open within Global North and Global South, closed between (see SI Appendix, Table S1 for a description of Global North and South):

If o,d are in the same Global region π o d=1 If o,d are in different Global regions π o d=0.

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Effect of border policy on exposure and vulnerability to climate change

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Migration is increasingly presented as an adaptation solution to climate change. When populations move, they change their level of exposure and vulnerability to climate change impacts. We analyze how different border policies might affect people's exposure and vulnerability.

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WHAT DOES THE POSSIBLE BORDER WALL MEAN FOR THE ECOSYSTEM?

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WHAT DOES THE POSSIBLE BORDER WALL MEAN FOR THE ECOSYSTEM?

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By Briana Mitchel ('19)

The debate about the possible building of the border wall has been very tense since the election of President Trump, but a frequently overlooked problem is the effect that this may have to the ecosystem around the building site. The wall itself will separate the migration of some animals that would usually cross between the two countries without a problem. This will make food resources scarce for animals like jaguars, ocelots, and the Mexican gray wolf, and with these animals already struggling population-wise, the border wall could further these animal's risk of extinction. The wall would break up naturally formed habitats for these animals who have been essential in maintaining the food chain in an ecosystem that existed before humans drew a border through it.

According to a 2016 analysis of data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "More than 100 animals that are listed as threatened, endangered or candidates for such status under the Endangered Species Act from coast to coast could potentially be impacted by Trump's proposal." In addition to those mentioned above, among these animals are migratory birds. With the 30 foot wall in place, it will make it difficult for birds to migrate properly which will, in turn, affect the reproduction of the birds that are in the vicinity and may lead to more endangered animals, further weakening the ecosystems that we all depend on for our wellbeing. According to Vox, "The new sections of fence under contract are slated for the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas and will cut right through a federal wildlife refuge, a state park, Native American gravesites, and the National Butterfly Center. Conservationists and wildlife managers consider this region to be one of the most ecologically valuable areas on the border." With the blatant disregard of those who reside there - humans, ancestors, and animals - it is important that this is talked about at least in our community if it is not going to recognized by the President. However, to make a change that is generational it first has to be acknowledged by our President. This barrier will prevent animals from accessing food and water, disrupt migration and reproduction, and change the way animals interact with each other, forcing adaptation to survive. Adaptation is a consistent part of life for human and nonhuman inhabitants of this planet, but we have the power to make decisions that support life rather than force a fight for survival.

The building of the border wall will be detrimental to all species and have an almost horrific domino effect to all animals and will, in turn, hurt humans as well, as our own well-being depends on thriving ecosystems. Much like national geographic suggests from this list of ways the border wall could disrupt the environment, it shows that this one action is contingent to various aspects of the environment. Check out the link below! https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/how-trump-us-mexico-border-wall-could-impact-environment-wildlife-water/

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What does the possible Border Wall mean for the ecosystem? - Environmental Stewardship

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By Briana Mitchel ('19) The debate about the possible building of the border wall has been very tense since the election of President Trump, but a frequently overlooked problem is the effect that this may have to the ecosystem around the building site. The wall itself will separate the migration of some animals that would ...

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My first source talked about robot dogs being deployed to deter migrants from entering the U.S.

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Trail cameras reveal more than 100 wildlife species along Arizona's southern borderlands -  AZCentral

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Trail cameras reveal more than 100 wildlife species along Arizona's southern borderlands -  AZCentral

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https://www.azcentral.com/in-depth/news/local/arizona-environment/2021/04/15/cameras-capture-images-over-100-species-along-us-mexico-border/4640120001/

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If you take a walk through the oak trees in the grasslands along the Arizona-Mexico border, you might spot a deer grazing in the distance or a Mexican jay perched on a branch.

But many animals are elusive. Wildlife cameras open a window to peer into their hidden lives, capturing images of creatures that usually wander through unseen.

Strapped to trees, the cameras work by sensing motion and heat. When triggered, day or night, they begin taking photos of whatever is passing by.

Over the past year, researchers with the conservation group Sky Island Alliance have been studying animals along about 30 miles of the border using dozens of cameras. The purpose of the project is to document species that live near areas where the Trump administration built new stretches of border wall.

The borderlands harbor a rich variety of wildlife, making up one of the great hotspots of biodiversity in North America. In the rugged mountains, deserts and grasslands, a large number of animal species come together in some of the wildest and most remote lands in the Southwest.

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While the cameras have become a valuable tool for conservationists advocating against wall construction and for portions of the barriers to be taken down, the images also provide a rare closeup look at the animals that make their home along the border.

The cameras are spread in a grid formation, with 58 evenly spaced observation points on both sides of the border. The study covers a 67 square-mile area, about the size of Washington, D.C., running through rolling grasslands and foothills of the Huachuca and Patagonia mountains.

In 12 months, the cameras have documented 106 species. And the list continues to grow.

Here are some examples:

This white-nosed coati was photographed as it roamed about the Patagonia Mountains at sunset.

Coatis, also known as coatimundis, live in areas ranging across the Americas from Arizona to Argentina. They feed on insects, small rodents and lizards, among other things.

Females and their young live in groups called bands, while adult males mostly live alone. The researchers have spotted both bands of animals and lone males.

The borderlands lie at the northern end of the coatis' range, while larger populations lie to the south in Mexico and Central America. Conservationists say coatis are too large to cross through the spaces in new sections of border wall, and that bands of animals on the U.S. side could end up isolated from larger populations in Mexico.

How many javelinas do you see?

This squadron of javelinas was photographed in the San Rafael Valley in southeast Arizona. Javelinas live in large family groups - also known as squadrons - with usually 10 or fewer individuals. Some groups, however, have been reported to include more than 50 javelinas.

Javelinas have a large range and are found from southern Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to as far south as northern Argentina.

They are primarily herbivores, feeding on native plants like agave, prickly pear and mesquite beans, but they will also eat lizards, dead birds and rodents. Their average lifespan in the wild is 10 years.

Still unsure of how many are in the photo? Based on the number of glowing eyes in the photo, it looks like there are at least five javelinas.

This lone elf owl was photographed in the Patagonia Mountains as it took a moment's rest on a low hanging branch. Known for their pale-yellow eyes, elf owls are among the smallest owls to frequent the Sonoran Desert.

They're only commonly found in the southwestern U.S., central Mexico and the Baja California Peninsula and are usually expected to live for 3-6 years in the wild.

Like the trail camera that took this photo, these owls have excellent night vision, which helps them feed on their preferred diet of insects. These invertebrate meals become harder to find during the cold of winter, which is why the owls commonly migrate south to Mexico.

A male pronghorn grazes along the grasslands as the sun sets in San Rafael Valley. Pronghorn are considered to be the fastest land mammal in North America, with the ability to travel at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour.

Males have sharply pointed horns. Females also have horns, which are smaller and more slender. The horn's tissue is composed of fused hairs which form over a bone core.

There are multiple subspecies of pronghorn in the U.S., including the Sonoran pronghorn, a subspecies listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Known as the "desert ghost," this subspecies is notoriously difficult to spot. With eyes positioned high on their heads, they can spot movement from miles away.

This black bear was photographed in the foothills of the Huachuca Mountains. Black bears are the widest-ranging North American bear and are the only bear species found in Arizona.

Except for females with cubs, black bears are solitary animals. Their range spans from Canada to Mexico; individuals roam around 7 to 15 square miles.

They eat acorns, pine and fir seeds, berries and honey and occasionally small rodents. At short distances, they can run as fast as 30 miles per hour.

This bobcat was photographed in the San Rafael Valley in southeast Arizona. About the size of an Australian shepherd, they prefer to feed on rabbits but will also eat birds, rodents, lizards, carrion and even snakes.

They are found from southern Canada to northern and central Mexico. They are active and shelter in a variety of habitats as they roam, from rocky caves to low tree branches. They prefer extensive plant cover, like that in rocky canyons and river corridors.

A female will move her kittens between several dens. Bobcats can live 13 to 15 years in the wild.

The wildlife camera enables a closeup look at this large mule deer buck. The name "mule deer" comes from the animals' large ears, which are similar to a mule's. Their ears and sharp eyesight help them avoid predators.

These social animals live in herds and have a huge range from the Yukon in the Arctic Circle to northern Mexico. Fawns are born between April and September, and twins are common.

After overhunting in the 19th century nearly drove them to extinction, mule deer populations have rebounded through conservation efforts.

A trail camera catches the colors of a lone pipevine swallowtail butterfly in the foothills of the Patagonia Mountains, while another image captures a dance between two butterflies in the grasslands of San Rafael Valley.

These butterflies are known for the beautiful dorsal surfaces of their wings, which are generally blue or blue-green.

The U.S. distribution of the pipevine swallowtail butterfly extends from southern Connecticut south to central Florida and west to Arizona, with an endemic subspecies in Northern California.

This bat was photographed in the Huachuca Mountains. The researchers weren't able to identify the species, but they've included the bat in their tally because it's part of a unique animal family.

About 70 different species of bats live in the Sonoran Desert. Some species, such as the lesser long-nosed bat and the Mexican free-tailed bat, migrate from Central America and Mexico into Arizona.

Some of these pollinators drink nectar and pollinate saguaros and agaves.

Conservation advocates say they're concerned that bright lights installed in places along the border barrier could disrupt the movements of nocturnal species like bats.

This mountain lion walked into view in the Patagonia Mountains.

Mountain lions live in an enormous range that stretches across the Americas, from Canada to South America. Throughout these areas, they are also known as cougars, pumas or panthers.

The cats roam through habitats in the borderlands, preying on deer and other animals.

As adults, their fur is mostly tawny-beige. But cubs have spotted coats and rings around their tails, which disappear as they grow.

One night last year, another wildlife camera near the border captured images of a mother cougar passing with three spotted cubs.

The Mexican subspecies of the Virginia opossum has appeared eight times in front of the cameras during the study over the past year.

This type of opossum is mostly found farther south in Mexico, and the border lies near the limit of its range. Conservation advocates say new sections of border wall could separate some individuals in Arizona from the core population further south in Mexico.

It's unknown how these marsupials may fare as temperatures rise with climate change. But conservationists say some species like this one could move northward as temperatures get hotter, and if the animals encounter a wall, that could hinder their movement.

The North American porcupine isn't commonly seen in Arizona. But the animals have been photographed more than 10 times during the yearlong study.

The porcupine is the second-largest rodent in North America after the beaver. They are often 2-3 feet long and can weigh about 20 pounds.

The U.S.-Mexico border is near the southern end of the porcupines' range, and the researchers said they've been excited to see the animals appear in their images.

The cameras are regularly checked by employees and volunteers, who change the batteries, switch out memory cards and bring the cards back to Tucson.

At her computer, wildlife specialist Meagan Bethel does the laborious work of going through the photos one by one. The vast majority of the images she looks at - thousands upon thousands of photos - are blank, with no animals, and she sets these aside.

The cameras can be triggered by trucks passing on a road, by people walking past or by wind rustling through the vegetation. Rainstorms will also set off the cameras.

Bethel said she moves quickly through the images, scanning for changes in movement. With nighttime images, she said she goes more slowly "to make sure nothing is hiding in the shadows."

Bethel said she loves seeing an animal appear in the frame.

"It's a glimpse into their daily lives and you can see the character they all have," Bethel said. "The deer and coyotes are some of the most common on camera but they are always doing something interesting. They display their natural behaviors that humans rarely see like playing, grooming, or nursing."

The cameras were installed and started recording photos in March 2020. Conservationists at Sky Island Alliance wanted to document the wildlife in habitat corridors along the Huachuca and Patagonia mountains, which span the border.

Leaders of the organization said they began the project with a sense of urgency because the Trump administration had waived environmental laws to speed construction, eliminating requirements for studies examining the environmental effects.

"What we tried to do as fast as we could was to try to fill in that gap," and do the sort of science that the federal government skipped, said Paulo Quadri Barba, the group's conservation director. Using the cameras over the past year has enabled them to gather data on the diversity of species, Quadri said, and "basically do what should have been done if laws would have been followed properly."

The many species show that this stretch of the border along the Arizona-Mexico border is a jewel of biodiversity, Quadri said, and should be protected and restored.

Before the border wall construction, species in the borderlands were already facing challenges, he said, such as the fragmentation of habitats and the effects of climate change. And now they're contending with a barrier, he said, that is "severing those populations of animals."

Quadri, an ecologist who previously worked for the park service in Mexico, said he'd like to see as much wall removed as possible, and for the U.S. and Mexico to work together to "heal the wounds" and establish a reserve or park around the area. He said the species documented in the study can also inform decisions about areas where segments of the wall could be removed.

In the meantime, the wildlife cameras are continuing to take photos along the border.

"We would of course love to catch jaguars and ocelots out there," Quadri said. "We know they're around."

Those rare cats have been photographed with trail cameras elsewhere in the border region. And as those and other animals wander in front of the lenses, the list of confirmed species will continue to grow.
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Trail cameras reveal more than 100 wildlife species along Arizona's southern borderlands

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If you take a walk through the oak trees in the grasslands along the Arizona-Mexico border, you might spot a deer grazing in the distance or a Mexican jay perched on a branch. But many animals are elusive. Wildlife cameras open a window to peer into their hidden lives, capturing images of creatures that usually wander through unseen.

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Border Patrol Overview -  U.S. Customs and Border Protection

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Border Patrol Overview -  U.S. Customs and Border Protection

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https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/overview

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Mission

The priority mission of the Border Patrol is preventing terrorists and terrorists weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from entering the United States. Undaunted by scorching desert heat or freezing northern winters, they work tirelessly as vigilant protectors of our Nation's borders.

While the Border Patrol has changed dramatically since its inception in 1924, its primary mission remains unchanged: to detect and prevent the illegal entry of individuals into the United States. Together with other law enforcement officers, the Border Patrol helps maintain borders that work - facilitating the flow of legal immigration and goods while preventing the illegal trafficking of people and contraband.

The Border Patrol is specifically responsible for patrolling nearly 6,000 miles of Mexican and Canadian international land borders and over 2,000 miles of coastal waters surrounding the Florida Peninsula and the island of Puerto Rico. Agents work around the clock on assignments, in all types of terrain and weather conditions. Agents also work in many isolated communities throughout the United States.

Border Patrol Staffing

Since 1924, the Border Patrol has grown from a handful of mounted agents patrolling desolate areas along U.S. borders to today's dynamic work force of over 21,000 agents at the end of FY 2012.

To ensure that the increased staffing and new resources provided by Congress were deployed in the most effective and efficient manner possible, the Immigration and Naturalization Service acted in early 1994 to develop and implement the agency's first National Border Patrol Strategy.

The Border Patrol continues to operate an aggressive recruiting program to bring new Border Patrol agents into the government. Read more about Careers with the Border Patrol.

All Border Patrol agents spend 13 weeks in training at the Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, New Mexico, which is a component of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

Border Patrol Operations

The primary mission of the Border Patrol is to protect our Nation by reducing the likelihood that dangerous people and capabilities enter the United States between the ports of entry. This is accomplished by maintaining surveillance, following up leads, responding to electronic sensor alarms and aircraft sightings, and interpreting and following tracks. Some of the major activities include maintaining traffic checkpoints along highways leading from border areas, conducting city patrol and transportation check, and anti-smuggling investigations.

Often, the border is a barely discernible line in uninhabited deserts, canyons, or mountains. The Border Patrol utilizes a variety of equipment and methods to accomplish its mission in such diverse terrain. Electronic sensors are placed at strategic locations along the border to detect people or vehicles entering the country illegally. Video monitors and night vision scopes are also used to detect illegal entries. Agents patrol the border in vehicles, boats, and afoot. In some areas, the Border Patrol even employs horses, all-terrain motorcycles, bicycles, and snowmobiles.

Linewatch and Signcutting

Linewatch operations are conducted near international boundaries and coast lines in areas of Border Patrol jurisdiction t o prevent the illegal entry and smuggling of individuals into the United States and to intercept those who do enter illegally before they can escape from border areas. Signcutting is the detection and the interpretation of any disturbances in natural terrain conditions that indicate the presence or passage of people, animals, or vehicles.

Traffic Checkpoints

Traffic checks are conducted on major highways leading away from the border to (1) detect and apprehend individuals attempting to travel further into the interior of the United States after evading detection at the border and (2) to detect illegal narcotics.

Transportation Checks

These are inspections of interior-bound conveyances, which include buses, commercial aircraft, passenger and freight trains, and marine craft.

Marine Patrol

Along the coastal waterways of the United States and Puerto Rico and interior waterways common to the United States and Canada, the Border Patrol conducts border control activities from the decks of marine craft of various sizes. The Border Patrol maintains over 109 vessels, ranging from blue-water craft to inflatable-hull craft, in 16 sectors, in addition to Headquarters special operations components.

Horse and Bike Patrol

Horse units patrol remote areas along the international boundary that are inaccessible to standard all-terrain vehicles. Bike patrol aids city patrol and is used over rough terrain to support linewatch.

Border Patrol Apprehensions

In FY 2012, Border Patrol agents made over 364,000 arrests of people illegally entering the country. Considerable success has been achieved in restoring integrity and safety to the Southwest border, by implementing our border-control strategy. These include Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego, CA, Operation Hold the Line in El Paso, TX, Operation Rio Grande in McAllen, TX, Operation Safeguard in Tucson, AZ, and the Arizona Border Control Initiative (ABCI) along the Arizona border.

Drug Seizures

An increase in smuggling activities has pushed the Border Patrol to the front line of the U.S. war on drugs. Our role as the primary drug-interdicting organization along the Southwest border continues to expand. The heightened presence of Border Patrol agents along the Southwest border has burdened narcotic traffickers and human smugglers. In FY 2012, Border Patrol agents on the Southwest border seized more than 5,900 pounds of cocaine and more than 2.2 million pounds of marijuana.

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Mission The priority mission of the Border Patrol is preventing terrorists and terrorists weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from entering the United States. Undaunted by scorching desert heat or freezing northern winters, they work tirelessly as vigilant protectors of our Nation's borders.

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https://sanantonioreport.org/climate-change-blamed-for-drop-in-migrating-monarch-butterfly-population/

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Climate Change Blamed for Drop in Migrating Monarch Butterfly Population

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Those tracking monarch butterflies’ migration through Texas to Canada this year will see nearly 15 percent fewer butterflies start the long journey.

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High-tech virtual wall is the latest defense at the US-Mexico border -  NY post

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High-tech virtual wall is the latest defense at the US-Mexico border -  NY post

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https://nypost.com/2021/09/05/surveillance-towers-set-up-along-us-mexico-border/

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SUNLAND PARK, New Mexico - The feds have turned to cutting-edge cameras developed by a virtual-reality wunderkind to help them monitor the southern border - by creating an invisible border wall.

The high-tech watch poles known as Autonomous Surveillance Towers are powered by solar energy and use artificial intelligence to detect movement along a two-mile radius, sending the information in real-time to agents patrolling the area.

And they're now being installed at different points along the nearly 2,000 miles of the US-Mexico border.

"The ASTs are in remote locations that are difficult to reach," Border Patrol agent Joel Freeland recently told The Post. "They operate 24-hours a day and are environmentally friendly because they rely entirely on solar power."

The ASTs were developed by Palmer Luckey, the 28-year-old founder and designer of Oculus VR and Oculus Rift.

The towers, which were first tested in 2018 in the San Diego Sector of the border, have recently been implemented in the El Paso Sector, one of the busiest crossing points for migrants along the border.

Agents working in the El Paso Sector have so far detained 155,892 people in the fiscal year 2021, which ends Sept. 30 - almost triple the 54,396 in all of FY2020.

"Most of our [recent] apprehensions have come from this tower," said Freeland, pointing at El Paso Sector's newest AST, which sits on a high remote patch of scrub where the borders of Texas, New Mexico and the Mexican state of Chihuahua meet. The camera has been in operation for only the last two weeks.

Officials would not provide an exact number on how many apprehensions there have been thanks to the towers.

"The AST scans the environment with radar to detect movement, orients a camera to the location of the movement detected by the radar, and analyzes the imagery using algorithms to autonomously identify items of interest, such as people or vehicles," according to a statement from US Customs and Border Patrol, which plans to deploy 140 of the cameras to create a virtual wall along the border.

Luckey, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, is marketing the towers that use a network of interconnected cameras and sensors through Anduril Industries, the defense technology startup he founded in 2017.

Anduril did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Border Patrol agents on the ground said they are grateful to Luckey for the technology, which supplements the work of thousands of agents deployed along the border in green and white Border Patrol pick-ups and SUVs. They watch for migrants and smugglers who typically cross under the cover of darkness.

"Before the ASTs, agents would only be able to monitor about a quarter of the area from their trucks," said Freeland. "Now, we can see everything."

Luckey initially designed the Oculus VR system working in his parents' California garage when he was in his late teens. The company he co-founded to build Oculus was sold to Facebook in March 2014 for $2 billion.

Luckey stayed on to work with Facebook. But three years later, he left amid backlash after it was reported that he had donated $10,000 to a pro-Trump group that created anti-Hillary Clinton memes. He later said in a Facebook post that he had donated to the group because he thought they had "fresh ideas."

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High-tech virtual wall is the latest defense at the US-Mexico border

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SUNLAND PARK, New Mexico - The feds have turned to cutting-edge cameras developed by a virtual-reality wunderkind to help them monitor the southern border - by creating an invisible border wall. The high-tech watch poles known as Autonomous Surveillance Towers are powered by solar energy and use artificial intelligence to detect movement along a two-mile radius, sending the information in real-time to agents patrolling the area.

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Towers and cameras, not a wall, keep migrants from crossing the border into Arizona -  LA times

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Towers and cameras, not a wall, keep migrants from crossing the border into Arizona -  LA times

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https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-border-tech-20180416-story.html

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Towers and cameras, not a wall, keep migrants from crossing the border into Arizona

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In the high desert east of this border town, the rolling hills topped with mesquite and paloverde trees are a picture of rugged desolation.

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Threats to Wildlife Persist Even as US Halts Border Wall Construction

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Threats to Wildlife Persist Even as US Halts Border Wall Construction

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Threats to Wildlife Persist Even as US Halts Border Wall Construction

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Threats to Wildlife Persist Even as US Halts Border Wall Construction

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Scientists say border wall’s ‘first-century technology is not the solution for a 21st-century problem’

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Racism and trauma have well-documented detrimental impacts on the long-term health of children, so it is unsurprising that the United States' recent xenophobic public policies and climate of racial tension is damaging the health of the country's largest population of minority youth, Latinos [,

]. Since January 2017, the United States has seen widely publicized and debated changes in our immigration policy including restrictions targeting those from Muslim nations, plans to build a wall along the southern U.S. border, ending Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for some immigrant groups, expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by 300%, expansion of priority deportation groups, policies punishing sanctuary cities, and recension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, among others [, ,

, , , ]. Many of these policy changes have been abrupt, chaotic, and of questionable legality, leading to ongoing court challenges and wide confusion about who is at greatest risk of deportation at any given time. All of these events are also occurring in the context of heightened racial tensions and animosity across the country. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch, the number of hate groups has risen across the United States for the past three years. 2017 saw a 50% increase in anti-immigrant hate groups, and the number of anti-Muslim groups has more than tripled since 2015 []. In their paper titled, "Impacts of immigration actions and news and the psychological distress of US Latino parents," Roche et al. present cutting edge research investigating the impacts of the nation's current confluence of racial/ethnic hostility and the resulting chaotic policy changes on the psychological and health behaviors of the parents of Latino adolescents [].

This study is extremely timely, with initial data collected immediately following the President's Executive Order rescinding DACA, in the midst of speculation about the fate of TPS for several immigrant groups, and while ongoing court cases related to adjacent policies such as the Muslim ban, penalties for sanctuary cities, and the legality of the proposed border wall were being widely publicized [

, , ]. This period represented a peak moment of xenophobic federal legislation that placed tremendous strain on immigrant communities throughout the United States. Dr. Roche and her colleagues succeeded in capturing a snapshot of stress associated with this anti-immigrant political activity for the parents of Latino youth in one community []. Despite the well-documented challenges of recruiting from relatively hidden populations of immigrants without documentation, these researchers were able to recruit a diverse sample, balanced between U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, TPS, and undocumented parents, allowing them to assess the impacts for each of these groups [

].

It is unfortunate and unsurprising that parents with more tenuous legal statuses (TPS or no documentation) reported greater worry about family separation, negative impacts on their children, and concern about their children's' educational attainment. However, even more concerning is the isolation from support systems, including health care, that some parents are employing as a strategy for promoting their children's safety in the current climate of fear []. The isolation strategies used by these parents are well-meaning in the context of multiple high-profile cases in which former sanctuary sites such as schools and hospitals have been the targets of ICE activity. In one highly publicized example, Rosa Maria Hernandez, a 10-year-old with cerebral palsy, was taken into ICE custody with armed guards outside of her hospital room after she crossed a border patrol checkpoint to have gallbladder surgery at Driscoll Children's Hospital in Texas []. In multiple other cases, parents have been arrested by ICE while taking their children to school [, ]. Numerous examples such as these are eroding the basic social contract between families and the medical systems and public intuitions that have previously been committed to the health and well-being of the nation's children.

Additionally, policy shifts such as the pending discontinuation of DACA may further erode access to health care by limiting access to employer or state-based insurance for youth and families. These changes leave parents to navigate difficult tasks, such as identifying immigrant-friendly clinicians and balancing the risks and benefits of enrolling eligible children for health care, whereas other family members might have to go without care and/or risk exposure to government institutions in order for health-care eligible family members to obtain benefits.

Among Roche et al.'s most surprising findings is the lack of a psychological protective effect for recipients of TPS. The authors initially hypothesized that stress levels would be dose-dependent, varying with the relative permanence of each participant's legal status []. However, participants with TPS did not follow this pattern. Instead, despite residing in the United States for as long as some U.S. citizens in the sample, participants with TPS reported higher rates of psychological distress or isolating behaviors than participants without documentation []. This suggests that in some ways the potential to lose a protected status may be even more detrimental to well-being than not having temporary protection, particularly in these politically volatile times. This finding aligns with the anxiety and emotional toll documented among DACA recipients who report anxiety related to long-term planning because of their temporary legal status []. Together, these findings demonstrate that longer term immigration reforms will be critical to providing stability and protecting the well-being of families and youth in immigrant communities.

Immigration policy in the United States continues to change rapidly, with the potential to support or harm the country's 41 million immigrants and their 37 million U.S.-born children [

]. If programs granting temporary reprieves from deportation such as DACA and TPS continue, it will be important to assess their impact on the health of youth over time and with continued shifts in the nation's political environment. As Roche et al.'s finding suggest, despite the reprieve from deportation granted by these programs, youth with temporary statuses may be at high risk of psychological stress, as well as isolation from heath care, education, and community resources. Additionally, a child's legal status also has the potential to compound a parent's psychological stress and isolating behaviors. For example, some parents may act to isolate children with temporary or no legal status; other parents may experience stress related to having children with differing immigration statuses. Finally, we have much to learn about the impacts of regional and organizational sanctuary policies, which are gaining popularity across the country. Clinicians, social scientists, and lawmakers can all learn from the rapid policy evaluation of Roche et al., which is essential to a future rooted in evidence-based policy that can promote the health and well-being of the country's children regardless of where they or their parents were born.

References

1. Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study.

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2. A life course perspective on how racism may be related to health inequities.

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3. California to sue Trump administration over plan for U.S.-Mexico border wall.
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4. 2017: The year in hate and extremism: Southern Poverty Law Center; February 11, 2018.
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5. Impacts of immigration actions and news and the psychological distress of US Latino parents raising adolescents.

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6. Federal judge blocks Trump's executive order on denying funding to sanctuary cities.
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Raymond-Flesch M.

Siemons R.

Brindis C.

Research and engagement strategies for young adult immigrants without documentation: lessons learned through community partnership.

Prog Community Health Partnerships: Res Educ Action. 2016; 10 : 373-382

8. The U.S. Nursed an Undocumented 10-Year-Old. Now It May Deport Her.
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9. California to sue Trump administration over plan for U.S.-Mexico border wall.
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10. "There is no help out there and if there is, it's really hard to find": A qualitative study of the health concerns and health care access of Latino "DREAMers".

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11. The Integration of Immigrants into American Society.

The National Academies Press, Washington, DC 2015 ()

Article Info

Footnotes

Conflicts of Interest: The author has no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.

Identification

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.03.001

ScienceDirect
Access this article on ScienceDirect

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Negative Health Consequences of Anti-Immigration Policies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Racism and trauma have well-documented detrimental impacts on the long-term health of children, so it is unsurprising that the United States' recent xenophobic public policies and climate of racial tension is damaging the health of the country's largest population of minority youth, Latinos [1,2].

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Agents Use High- And Low-Tech Tracking At Border -  NPR

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Agents Use High- And Low-Tech Tracking At Border -  NPR

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https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97674896

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Agents Use High- And Low-Tech Tracking At Border

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Night vision scopes, motion detectors and cameras, combined with an increase in Border Patrol agents on foot, aim to stop people from illegally crossing into the United States. Despite the increases in monitoring, border crossers who have been caught say they will continue to try to re-enter the sta…

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https://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/will-climate-change-impact-bird-watching-in-south-texas-some-say-it-already-is/Content?oid=2473962

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Will Climate Change Impact Bird-Watching in South Texas? Some Say It Already Is

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One of the country’s premier birding destinations is right in our own backyard. The Rio Grande Valley is a bird-watching mecca for many reasons: The...

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Why gender is an important part of migration policy: an example

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We take an example from Indonesia to illustrate why a gender lens is useful for studying migration.

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What is the experiences of lgbtq+ migrants in Texas?

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What is the experiences of lgbtq+ migrants in Texas?

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LGBTQ Migrants face unique dangers when U.S rejects and returns them to Mexico 

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LGBTQ Migrants face unique dangers when U.S rejects and returns them to Mexico 

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More than 30,000 asylum seeking migrants have been returned to Mexico to await their day in immigration court - a process that can take months. This is part of the Trump administration's Remain in Mexico policy. The program says vulnerable populations may be excluded from the program, but many migrants who are considered vulnerable populations, including LGBTQ asylum seekers, are still being sent back to Mexico.

In Matamoros, a 25-year-old Salvadoran woman in a black dress with white polka dots sat with a group of women. They met as strangers but over the past few weeks, they grew close.

"It was like finding my family outside of my country. It's really beautiful," she said. "They saw that I was sleeping outside on the floor. We share the same blood and the same experiences. If I don't have something they'll give me [some,] and if they don't have something, I'll give them some."

The women were all LGBTQ asylum seekers who were sent back to Mexico to wait for their day in immigration court in the U.S.

The Salvadoran woman is trans. She said she left her home country several years ago because gangs constantly extorted her, and she feared for her life. Her family at one point said she had to leave. They promised to support her until she got to the U.S.-Mexico border, and she left with another trans woman.

But they ran into problems when they arrived at Mexico's southern border and got into a taxi.

"This man had informed someone that he had picked up two people, but he didn't know we were trans," the Salvadoran woman said. "I was kidnapped in Mexico with a gun to my head. I was raped. I also knew my friend was being raped because of her screams."

She said they were able to escape one night when the men got drunk. They returned home but then they tried again. That second time, they made it to the U.S. But she was deported, and so she tried again. That time she was told to wait in Mexico because the Remain in Mexico program, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP, was in effect.

Credit Verónica G. Cárdenas for Texas Public Radio

During her wait, she faced several problems.

"I was at the edge of the river taking a bath, and then a truck showed up and offered me money to go work at a show bar, and he wanted me to go with him to see where he wanted me to work," she said. "They see me as a point of prostitution."

She said she also faced discrimination and transphobia from other migrants and governments on both sides of the Rio Grande.

Dani Marrero Hi is with the Texas Civil Rights Project, a statewide nonprofit alliance of lawyers who serve Texas communities. She works at the Rio Grande Valley office. She said all asylum seekers are vulnerable while waiting in Mexico, but there's an added layer of danger for LGBTQ migrants.

"They didn't trust that their home country could keep them safe. They didn't trust the journey, but they made it anyways, and now that they're here they don't trust the Mexican government, they don't trust the U.S. government and it's not because of some conspiracy, it's because of this reality that you see this policy," Marrero Hi said. "You see these official documents, and they say, 'Here are the steps to do X' and then you take those steps, you follow the process and nothing happens."

The Texas Civil Rights Project recently worked with other Texas and Chicago based organizations to try to get six LGBTQ asylum seekers admitted into the U.S. and removed from the MPP program.

Marrero Hi said the migrants were admitted into the U.S. for review but were sent back to Mexico, even though MPP said vulnerable populations may be excluded on a case by case basis.

Credit Verónica G. Cárdenas for Texas Public Radio

She said she doesn't know what else U.S. Customs and Border Protection needs to hear to finally understand that these migrants are vulnerable because they must remain in Mexico.

"At this point it just feels that there's no way CBP to not know that. It's a willing and conscious choice that they're making that they know that this entire group of people, LGBTQ or not, all the hundreds of people here are vulnerable," said Marrero Hi. "They are willingly and choosing to violate their legal and human rights to seek asylum."

A Cuban woman who identified as lesbian was among the group who was recently returned. She fled her home country because a professor back home was extorting her and a police officer would threaten her about four times a week. The woman said she recently heard about Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker escorting several asylum seekers across the international bridge in El Paso.

"He crossed a couple of women and said they were not going to wait in Mexico, so why not us too?" she asked. "We're a bit more vulnerable. Why can't someone do the same for us?"

She said she would like to see local representatives, or any other elected official, do the same for them.

But for now she and the other LGBTQ asylum seekers were going to stick together.

The Salvadoran woman said despite everything she's been through she's going to continue to fight and push forward because she wanted to be an example of resilience.

Credit Verónica G. Cárdenas for Texas Public Radio

"Above all I want to be free and live in peace, to be able to lay in my bed and be able to say I'm not going to pay anymore to live," she said.

The Texas Civil Rights Project and other organizations have launched a campaign to raise awareness about this group of asylum seekers in hopes of getting them admitted into the U.S.

The groups also called on U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, who represents Brownsville, to get involved and walk the LGBTQ asylum seekers across the international bridge to ensure their asylum claims are accepted.

"Once again the Trump administration has created a crisis where one did not previously exist," Vela said in a statement. "Asylum seekers have a right to apply for protection, and the Remain in Mexico policy of turning back vulnerable migrants, especially this young group from the LGBTQ community, needlessly exacerbates an already dire humanitarian situation."
Reynaldo Leaños Jr. can be reached at Reynaldo@TPR.org and on Twitter at @ReynaldoLeanos

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LGBTQ Migrants Face Unique Dangers When U.S. Rejects And Returns Them To Mexico

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More than 30,000 asylum seeking migrants have been returned to Mexico to await their day in immigration court - a process that can take months. This is part of the Trump administration's Remain in Mexico policy.

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The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS)

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In 1990, the total appropriation to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), including for adjudication of applications, was $1.2 billion. By 2012, appropriations to the two Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enforcement agencies, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), were a combined $17.6 billion. The $17.6 billion figure does not count large ticket DHS enforcement programs like US-VISIT or E-Verify, or the substantial enforcement costs of other federal agencies, or the federal court system or states and localities. According to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, the funding and staffing levels of CBP and ICE exceed the combined levels of the four major Department of Justice (DOJ) law enforcement agencies. CBP and ICE also receive 16 times more funding than the three main US labor standards enforcement entities. Earlier this month, the Arizona Republic reported that the United States has spent $106 billion on border enforcement over the last five years, and has doubled the number of Border Patrol agents to 21,394 over the last seven years.

The legislation now being debated in the US Senate (S. 744) provides for multi-billion funding increases in enforcement at the US-Mexico border. It would require around-the-clock surveillance and a 90 percent migrant "effectiveness" rate - defined as the percentage of migrants apprehended or turned back - across the entire border. The recent debate has been over whether this rate and other enforcement goals will trigger and potentially delay the onset of a legalization program, and whether the Administration or Congress will make this determination. Senator Robert Corker (R-TN) and Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) have introduced an amendment to S. 744 - which has been endorsed by several Gang of 8 members - that would double the number of Border Patrol agents, add an additional 350 miles of secure fencing and increase border surveillance, including by drones. These border enforcement increases to S. 744 would cost an additional $30 billion, monies taken from net "savings" that the Congressional Budget Office (CB) has determined would be generated by the bill. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-GA) has reportedly boasted that the amendment has "practically militarized" the border and Sen. Corker has called the amendment "almost overkill." The question arises: does the United States actually need to invest more in border security? It likely does not and certainly not at the levels provided for by the Corker/Hoeven amendment.

Migrant apprehensions - a proxy for illegal entries - are at levels last seen decades ago, although they have climbed modestly in recent months. According to the Arizona Republic, Border Patrol agents arrested (on average) 106 migrants per year in 2005. Last year, agents arrested 17 migrants on average. In the El Paso sector, 3.5 migrants were arrested per agent. This is not surprising, given the exponential increase in agents in recent years. Nor is it surprising that DHS has not seen the need to request additional Border Patrol agents. By contrast, there is a need for additional immigration officers at ports-of-entry. Parenthetically, the CBO asserted that net unauthorized immigration would be reduced by 25 percent under S. 744, but this claim cannot be sustained since net unauthorized immigration is now less than zero.

One argument for increasing Border Patrol funding is that illegal entries will increase significantly when the economy fully recovers. The corollary is that growth in the unauthorized population stopped after 2007 because of the economic crisis. Two theories are offered to support this assertion: 1) the financial crisis caused emigration of unauthorized immigrants to increase considerably; and 2) poor economic conditions caused the inflow of unauthorized immigrants to decline after 2007. In fact, the best available statistical evidence shows no detectable increase in foreign-born emigration in 2008-2009 compared to previous years. The population stopped growing because new entries into the unauthorized population -visa overstays and illegal border crossers - fell dramatically from 2000 to 2009.[1] Unauthorized "entries" might have been very modestly reduced by the economic crisis, but Figure 1 shows that the decline in these entries was as steep in 2006 and 2007 as it was in 2008 and 2009.

Others argue in support of high, difficult-to-measure "effectiveness" rates based on the fallacy that two or three crossers elude detection for every one arrested.In fact, if three migrants had "gotten away" for every migrant arrested at the southern border since 1965 - not accounting for "circular" migration - the very last of the 113 million residents of Mexico would have crossed the border in 2005.

Robust border enforcement is essential. However, there are at least two major reasons for not adding substantial new resources now. First, an expanded temporary worker program (of the kind anticipated by S. 744) is a more cost-effective way to reduce attempted entries than increased border enforcement. As temporary workers arrive legally through the ports-of-entry, illegal entries will drop even more than they have in recent years. The Border Patrol, in turn, will be able to focus more of its resources on stopping criminals and potential security threats and on interdicting the flow of illegal drugs across the border.

Every increase in border enforcement has made it more difficult for unauthorized seasonal workers to return to their jobs in the United States after going home for visits or holidays. So increasingly, these workers have remained in the United States. According to an INS study in the late 1990s, as many as half of those apprehended trying to enter the United States illegally were not new migrants - they were just trying to return to their residences in the United States.

Before 1968, there was no numerical limit on immigration from Mexico (or the Western Hemisphere). Limiting legal migration from Mexico - while failing to establish a large-scale temporary worker program - changed a circular, mostly temporary, migration pattern into a flow that was north-bound and relatively more permanent. The unauthorized resident population from Mexico increased sharply after 1968 because the United States made it harder for migrants to circulate legally.

Previous estimates also raise the possibility that overstays from Mexico increase as border enforcement increases. In annual estimates derived by the INS from 1985 to 1992, Mexico was by far the leading country for overstays. From 1985 to 1992, total overstays in the United States were estimated to be about 269,000 per year. Of those, about 48,000 per year, or 18 percent, were from Mexico. Although no similar estimates have been made since 1992, the continuing buildup of border enforcement over the past two decades might have increased the annual number of overstays from Mexico. Additional increases in border enforcement are likely to yield diminishing returns at an increasing cost.

The discussion of border control raises the possibility that the additional border enforcement resources included in S.744 and in the Corker/Hoeven amendment could be unnecessary at best and counterproductive at worst. Any marginal additional gains in reducing illegal entries between the ports of entry could well be offset by increases in overstays as well as other methods of illegal entry, such as stowaways and entry with false documents.

Overstays dropped dramatically after 9/11, and as long as current levels of security remain in place illegal entries and overstays should remain at low levels. Figure 2 shows trends in total overstays from 2000 to 2009. Moreover, despite the assumptions in the recent CBO report, overstays in the new temporary worker programs in S. 744 are likely to be fewer than 10,000 per year, and probably well below that. INS estimates for 1985 to 1992 show that slightly over 2 percent of total non-immigrants overstayed each year; for Mexico, the rate was 5 percent. If rates have remained relatively constant, the annual number of overstays of 200,000 new temporary workers each year would be in the 5,000 to 10,000 range. Full implementation of the E-Verify program should further reduce the number of overstays.

-Robert Warren,(Retired) Director, Statistics Division, Immigration and Naturalization Service and Donald Kerwin, Executive Director, Center for Migration Studies

[1] In addition to the steep decline in overstays and illegal entries from 2000 to 2009, the number leaving the unauthorized immigrant population, through emigration, removal by DHS, adjustment to legal status or death, increased gradually throughout the decade, exceeding a half million in 2009.

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Does the United States Need to Invest More in Border Security? Probably Not - The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS)

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In 1990, the total appropriation to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), including for adjudication of applications, was $1.2 billion. By 2012, appropriations to the two Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enforcement agencies, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration...

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Will Climate Change Impact Bird-Watching in South Texas? Some Say It Already Is

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One of the country’s premier birding destinations is right in our own backyard. The Rio Grande Valley is a bird-watching mecca for many reasons: The...

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This story by Greg Harman & Marisol Cortez or iginally appeared in Deceleration and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

It was spring migration, and millions of birds from across Mexico and Central and South America were chugging north along their annual route. Then, on the night of May 3, 2017, after days laboring over the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, an untold number hit a storm at the Texas coast. Galveston Island's 23-story American National Insurance Co. building, the island's largest, provided a beacon impossible to ignore. For hundreds of songbirds known to navigate by the faint light of stars, those dazzling artificial lights likely generated a sense of disorientation, leading them to spiral out of the sky. In the morning, employees found their scattered, broken bodies by the dozens - nearly 400 in all, once tallied - around the property.

Response was swift. The building owners announced they were shutting down their exterior lights for the remainder of migration season, and efforts to create an "early warning system" for building managers were soon in development. The tragic event helped elevate a national campaign known as " Lights Out," which has long urged cities, businesses, and individuals to turn off their lights at night during these critical times of the year.

346 migratory birds, 1 night, 1 Galveston building. A tough reminder for bird-friendly lighting and design. Act: https://t.co/VfuKpG54Yq pic.twitter.com/9x7Xy4JZp4

- Houston Audubon (@HoustonAudubon) May 4, 2017

Armed with improvements in radar tracking of large bird populations, researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology began looking more closely at urban lighting. Between 100 million and 1 billion birds die each year in building strikes in the United States. In 2019 they published their findings in Frontiers in Ecology and Environment and later released a list of 126 US cities ranked by the threat they posed to migrating birds. The team compared the proximity of cities to major flyways and the density of historic bird traffic captured on radar with the light pollution in each respective city as seen on satellite imagery. They called out the most critical cities in a press release quoting Kyle Horton, one of the study's authors:

"Chicago, Houston, and Dallas are uniquely positioned in the heart of North America's most trafficked aerial corridors. This, in combination with being some of the largest cities in the US, make them a serious threat to the passage of migrants, regardless of season."

But Houston and Dallas were not alone among Texas cities in the risks they pose. Nationally, San Antonio ranks as the 10th worst city during spring migrations, when birds travel north in denser groupings, and 14th when the Cornell team calculated fall migration travel patterns. Austin scores high also: 18th in the spring and 27th in the fall. But where Houston, Dallas, Austin, and other cities advanced changes to downtown lighting practices roughly 20 years after the first program got underway in Chicago, San Antonio has not yet implemented a similar change to lighting policies.

"This project is not something that the Center City Development & Operations Department has been a part of," city spokesperson Kelly Saunders said of downtown operations and Lights Out.

Not only does the City of San Antonio have no plans to dim lights for the birds, this coming weekend they will flip the switch on 100,000 River Walk holiday lights two weeks earlier than usual. This move edges into the final days of fall migration, which generally lasts into middle to late November. (Lights Out, likewise, runs through November 30 for fall migration.)

It was a strange decision not only because of what researchers already know about bird strikes but also because the mayor and city council only a year ago passed a resolution recognizing World Migration Day - an act that helped secure San Antonio's approval by Texas Parks and Wildlife as a "Certified" Bird City. But while San Antonio may be following the Bird City script, some of its actual policies - this delay on lighting, coupled with more direct attacks on migratory birds and bird habitat - suggest the bestowed laurels should be worn uneasily.

'Bird City' Tourism

City Councilmember Manny Pelaez makes birdhouses in his spare hours. Some of these creations he has sent to council colleagues as gifts. He also likes to photograph birds. From a councilmember who once pledged his vote on a local climate plan to the city's largest oil and gas company (but gave an impassioned plea for biodiversity protection on its eventual adoption), these hobbyist revelations from a discussion preceding a December 2020 vote recognizing World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD) may have caught some by surprise. An air of celebration marked the action as roughly half of the council members stepped up to offer Zoom testimony in support prior to the vote.

Pelaez, whose law firm specializes in helping commercial property owners collect insurance dollars for damages sustained from weather-related disasters, went to bat for the birds.

"What a lot of us love about San Antonio is that we just happen to be located smack dab in the middle of a major migratory bird flyway as well as the migratory butterflies that all of us celebrate," he said. "If we get this designation as a bird city, it comes at no cost for any of us."

It's a point the resolution picks up at the twelfth "whereas":

"Whereas a resolution recognizing WMBD will assist local community organizations such as Bird City Texas - San Antonio and the Bexar Audubon Society in acquiring a Bird City Texas Designation for San Antonio, elevating our profile for conservation and birdwatching and catalyzing birding tourism."

The group praised staffers working on conservation issues, as well as those from Mitchell Lake Audubon Center and Bexar Audubon, who had been helping guide the city along the Bird City process.

The resolution was preceded by a glowing letter from Mayor Ron Nirenberg on November 3, 2020, pledging support to Audubon's Bird City efforts on the City's behalf. To achieve certification for the City, he pledged to work to make San Antonio more "bird friendly": committing to more public education around the value of bird-friendly habitats, encouraging the use of native plants, installing demonstration gardens and interpretive displays, and promoting birding-related tourism.

"More specifically," he wrote, "we have programs to continue education on implementing dark skies policies during periods of peak migration."

Clearly, programs to "continue education on implementing policies" do not equal actual policies.

Attack at Elmendorf

Despite these gestures, all is far from well in the world of city-bird relations. And the tourists may notice in time that alongside a steep rise in landscape plantings with "native" explanatory signage downtown, something else is astir. Only a year before Nirenberg's letter supporting Bird City certification, the City of San Antonio destroyed what was likely our oldest established rookery, based on dubious claims by Joint Base San Antonio that were subsequently amplified by the city.

Employees of Mitchell Lake Audubon Center took many of the likely hundreds of nests removed or destroyed in the off chance birds may one day discover and occupy them at their Southside preserve.

{For more on the Elmendorf removal, read Deceleration's 2019 story " In Praise of Nuisance Heronries, Part One "}

Because all of the targeted birds are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, San Antonio's Parks Department needed to gain federal clearance to remove the birds. In an August 2019 work order granted by the US Department of Agriculture, City Parks Department Assistant Manager Bill Pennell first listed the range of aggressive measures the park sought to use to drive out the birds of Elmendorf Park.

On the list of tools allowing the city to harass cattle, snowy, and great egrets, as well as cormorants, included "pyrotechnic[s], propane cannon[s]; firearms, mylar balloons, methyl anthranilate; drones, lasers, effigies, scare-man; nest/egg removal; trucks, dogs."

We witnessed all but the firearms, dogs, and drones during the razing of Bird Island, all due to four collisions with cattle egrets at Kelly Field in nine years, allegedly linked to the roost at Elmendorf ( out of roughly 500 wildlife strikes documented by the US Air Force at that airfield).

In one of her last meetings as a councilmember, former D5 elected Shirley Gonzales used her turn at the mic to try to tilt the Elmendorf story back in her favor. An early and consistent champion of the assault on Elmendorf, she now blamed the Air Force. "As you can imagine, the community had a lot to say about a program we were forced to do by the military," Gonzales said.

But the City's bird removal campaign didn't stop (or begin) at Elmendorf. As far as we've been able to determine, chemical deterrents were first used at Brackenridge Park, with a sprayer attached to the older playground, as seen in the video below. And as revealed in documents recently obtained through an open records request, the city's campaign of bird removal has since expanded to the entire park system.

"Prolonged presence in this area is not recommended." City Parks at work in Brackenridge Park.

Chasing the Birds

In December of 2019, Pennell submitted to the USDA an expanded "work initiation document for wildlife damage management." While the original project had covered Elmendorf's "30 acres," this new order authorized a project scope of 16,237 acres of territory - meaning the aggressive tools used at Elmendorf could be deployed across the city's entire parks system.

Not long after, during the height of the COVID-19 lockdown in late March 2020, Deceleration was alerted to Parks/USDA targeting of birds along the San Antonio River in Southtown, five miles from Elmendorf and another mile further from the air bases at Lackland and Kelly Field.

Posting to NextDoor on March 31, 2020, a resident of King Williams warned neighbors that the City Parks Department and the USDA would soon be deploying "pyro type screamers to get [the birds] moved out."

The poster added that city and federal officials "believe they have multiplied here because of the movement of the birds out of Elmendorf that they accomplished last year."

On April 2, Deceleration documented USDA and City Parks staff in action, using lasers and bottle rocket-like pyrotechnics to harass birds over the San Antonio River from a bridge at the Blue Star Arts Complex. (A passerby observing us filming commented with incredulity, "Those birds are supposed to be here.")

Local bird photographer Alesia Garlock has tracked the city's displacement efforts through dogged on-the-ground investigation and regular open-records requests (which unearthed the above work orders), telling Deceleration that since Elmendorf, the city has been chasing, essentially, the same migratory birds around the city. And while egrets have long roosted in Brackenridge, her regular observations there as part of citizen science initiatives suggest that the numbers have increased over the last two years: "From Woodlawn [Lake], from Blue Star [Arts Complex in Southtown], from Nelson Brush area and who knows where else, a group of birds came to the trees [to roost] behind the playground at Brackenridge Park." So if anyone wonders why their children haven't had a playground to use there throughout our COVID-19 years, thank the forced eviction at Elmendorf.

But even before Elmendorf, the desire to drive migratory birds from Brackenridge was evident. For instance, an August 2019 ecological assessment of the park (PDF) conducted by UT's Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and released by the Brackenridge Park Conservancy urges stronger efforts to lure roosting egrets elsewhere (along with Brack's famous feral cats, deemed "the worst invasive species in the world").

As stated in this report:

"The park and zoo are employing harassment techniques to make the area less attractive for the rookery, with limited success. The next option would be to increase habitat value in a more appropriate location, while decreasing it in the current location by discouraging feeding, dislodging nests prior to egg laying and modifying the plant community."

So here's the rub. Whether through earlier attempts at seduction to better habitats or more recent campaigns of aggressive eviction, urban birds don't do as they're told.

Two years after their displacement from Bird Island, no egrets have come to occupy the nests relocated to Mitchell Lake Audubon Center. The nests have disintegrated, Deceleration was informed.

"It was an experiment," one MLAC staff wrote us, "and it showed that you can't make birds nest where you want them to nest, even if you give them a head start with a nest."

Undoubtedly, the Parks Department's efforts to dislodge nesting migratory birds around the city is a complicated one requiring further reporting, especially around water quality claims. But the ugliness of removal efforts witnessed to date show why San Antonio's failure to address building strikes downtown - even as the City reaps accolades and potential new sources of revenue thanks to its Bird City designation - is worth watching.

The Chicago Study

Informed by decades of bird-strike data collected at the McCormick Place Lakeside Center on the shore of Lake Michigan, a June 2020 study gave a blast of supportive science to Lights Out efforts. It demonstrated clearly that building illumination matters: Simply turning off lights reduces building-related bird deaths by as much as 60 percent.

Since 1978, researchers in Chicago have collected roughly 40,000 dead birds at the base of the Lakeside Center. But the number of collections plummeted dramatically in 1999 when the building started regularly turning off lights at night. As these decades were also marked by plummeting bird populations nationwide, some of this decrease may be due to overall lower bird activity, the report notes. But the graphic cliff that appeared after 1999 presents an unmistakable and convincing divide. Bird kills per year plummeted from an average of around 800 in preceding decades to 200-300 in the span of a couple of years.

"Although our research focuses on a single site," the authors wrote, "our findings have global implications for reducing or eliminating a critically important cause of bird mortality."

One implication here for San Antonio is that, in the absence of city-level policy changes, actions by individual building owners (and even individual windows) matter.

"Our results certainly support a call for individual action in this regard, as darkening individual windows - especially those with obvious collision problems - is likely to make a meaningful difference," Benjamin Van Doren of Cornell, one of the study's authors, wrote Deceleration. "[Though] permanently darkening five windows that are particularly problematic for birds will likely have a much greater impact than darkening five random windows."

The Chicago data also suggests that it's time to move beyond the seasonal, high-migration-period, or rapid-response lighting practices of Lights Out and talk about permanent changes to our built environment in response to light pollution.

"Where possible, permanent lighting adjustments, such as downshielding lighting, changing lighting color, and automating the usage of window blinds between certain hours, will reduce the load on individual actors and decrease the risks posed to nocturnally migrating birds by light pollution."

Lights Out, then, is less a destination than an inflection point.

As we make that transition, we must find each community's "right windows," so to speak. This process will almost certainly upset the city risk rankings of 2019 that has San Antonio positioned below Dallas, for instance. While Dallas ranks as the third most treacherous city for migrating birds, there is actually higher bird traffic in San Antonio, according to Van Doren. Dallas ranks as a more hazardous city because it covers three times the land area of San Antonio. "It's important to keep in mind that these rankings only use information about city size, light output, and migration intensity to estimate the number of birds that may be exposed," he wrote Deceleration. "We aren't directly measuring the threat each city poses to birds, as that would be a lot more complex."

It is into this complexity that Bexar Audubon in San Antonio and teams of volunteers around the county have waded by monitoring downtown city streets as a part of massive data collection effort known as the Lights Out Texas Monitoring Project.

Finding the Right Windows

Trying to understand why the San Antonio skyline was unchanged this fall in spite of the advance of so much science around building lighting and bird deaths, one of our first calls was to Bexar Audubon. A week later, I met a small team gathered in the pre-dawn light of a downtown parking garage. Audubon member Patty Pasztor used an orange origami bird to demonstrate to a small team of six the process of collecting victims and documenting bird strikes. Maps were distributed. Refreshers on using the iNaturalist app to punch in the pics and locations were offered. It would be one of their last surveys of the fall migration.

A Volunteer Protocol flyer provided to participants beforehand read: "The main objective of the Lights Out Texas-San Antonio Project is to monitor and document bird building collision casualties in downtown San Antonio during peak bird migration. This data will be used to influence building owners and managers to turn off unnecessary lighting between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. during peak bird migration periods. Bird fatalities will be collected and used for scientific research."

Similar efforts have been taking place across the country. Folks can view the local findings as they are posted on the Texas Lights Out Project page on iNaturalist.

We didn't know it at the time, but the night we joined the group, October 21, was a few days after the "peak migration" for our area had passed, after which it's estimated that half of all migrating birds will have passed through Bexar County. But migration, which generally lasts into middle or late November, is still well underway, with the potential for "large pulses of migrants" a reality yet, according to Colorado State University's Kyle Horton, professor of conservation biology. CSU is a key contributor to BirdCast, a program that provides real-time migration imagery using radar, acoustics, and community science data to better understand migration movements and develop strategies to lessen detrimental human impact upon them.

The work has made rapid response by property managers on nights of high migration possible.

Here's what 60 million birds look like streaming into Texas and the Gulf of Mexico well past our peak migration period, for instance:

In spite of the moves made elsewhere around the country and across the state, San Antonio's most prominent local birding advocates haven't called for any lighting changes downtown or in city buildings. As they finalize their findings, it's unclear if they will.

Rather than draw on national-level research like the Chicago building study and decades of related supportive research, Bexar Audubon wants to build their case upon the best local data they can gather personally, in spite of the challenges of working with an all-volunteer team with limited property access.

"With a lot of these buildings there are overhangs and balconies. We have lots of hotels," said Bexar Audubon President Britt Coleman as we scan the landscaping across the street from the Aztec Theatre. "So if there's a bird strike that occurs higher up in the building, for us to find it, it has to fall all the way to the sidewalk. ... It makes it a little bit of a challenge."

And we're not the only ones looking for victims.

"A lot of times cats or other animals will get to the carcasses before we do," said Megan Vaupel, a volunteer from the Texas Master Naturalist program who joined the downtown search. "Even if we just find a pile of feathers we do record that, photograph that, take note of it."

Coleman is hoping for two years of data to inform any recommendations the group may make to the city or area property managers. As they tabulate their findings for 2021, the group is actively talking about 2022.

"I want to make sure when we go before anybody in authority that we will be received as rational and thoughtful and not just somebody who is going off of emotions," he said. "There's enough of that already. And honestly it doesn't do any good."

When we reconnoiter inside the Grand Hyatt's parking garage on the east side of downtown, a wing picked up at Frost Tower on the other side of downtown in a plastic bag is passed around. Images of the sole remains from the morning's hunt are uploaded to iNaturalist with a note: "Wing with yellow at the shoulder. Possibly a meadowlark?" However, a staffer with Houston Audubon we speak to later suggests that wings that have been separated from the body like this indicate a hawk got hold of the bird, meaning it will likely not be counted as a building strike victim.

Bird Strikes, By the Numbers

Frost Tower is perhaps, our puffy morning eyes tell us, the second most clearly illuminated building downtown, behind only the Alamodome.

And, in fact, Frost Bank's spokesperson said the bank was participating in Lights Out both in Austin and San Antonio.

"Frost is a tenant, not the owner, in both the main Frost Tower in downtown San Antonio and the regional HQ Frost Tower in Austin, so we usually defer to the building owners on questions like this," said Bill Day, senior vice president of corporate communications. "However, Frost does take part in the Lights Out Texas program, where businesses dim or turn off outside decorative lighting on a seasonal basis to prevent harm to migrating birds."

And yet all 12 floors of Frost Tower occupied by the bank have been fully illuminated from within on Deceleration 's multiple inspections, including on the day I shadowed the Audubon crew. The external spines that etch the building's outline clear to the Frost logo at the building's apex were also fully lit.

It's also a stand-out kill site.

According to information supplied by Bexar Audubon, local volunteers collected 23 separate species on their spring and fall surveys. One out of every four birds discovered were white-winged doves (10). They were followed by grasshopper sparrows (3) and great-tailed grackles (3) for frequency. Less common birds, at least for inner-city denizens, included two painted buntings, a Chuck-will's-widow, and a northern waterthrush.

Documenting one of those deaths with a photograph of a bird crumpled in the tower's landscaping, iNaturalist user peterjoseph wrote:

"Bird looked like it crashed into glass of Frost Tower. Dropped on private property in Frost Tower property landscape. Could NOT retrieve until we got permission. It can be seen from the sidewalk. Looked like a dove (White wing Dove??)."

In spite of the low numbers overall, Frost Tower clearly stood out with one of every four dead birds found in its shadow.

For birds traveling south, Coleman says, Frost Tower is basically the first big glass building migrating birds would encounter when entering downtown. "Clearly that kind of structure is the kind that has the highest inclination of bird strikes," he said.

In a distant second to Frost's 10 birds, the Henry B. Gonzáles Convention Center clocked only three.

Coleman acknowledges the survey's challenges.

"We weren't always fully staffed every time we went out so there's always a possibility that there was stuff we could have gotten that we missed simply because people weren't at the right place at the right time," he said. "One interpretation is that downtown isn't quite as bad, certainly in comparison to Dallas and Houston."

Of course, Galveston Island's American National Insurance Co. building was just another untroubled landmark before it caught the attention of those hundreds of storm-weary birds in 2017.

There are no research partners among the downtown hotels, performance venues, or even the city's downtown operations, whose thousands of staff are tasked not with finding and documenting bird strikes but shielding their guests from unpleasant sights. That means brooms at the ready, immaculate sidewalks, and well-picked landscaping in a city that floats on tourist dollars.

One city worker we met while making the rounds described how he keeps the birds that he finds and holds them in a freezer at his office. For who, or what purpose, was unclear. When asked about the comment, city spokesperson Kelly Saunders did not respond by press deadline. After directing Deceleration to the migratory bird resolution of 2020, Mayor Nirenberg's Communications Director Bruce Davidson did not respond to multiple updates about this story's key findings and invitation for comment.

In light of globally significant research like the Chicago study, it's clear the value of Audubon's volunteer effort is in helping expose where our city's most dangerous windows are. But it would be wrong to use its findings, especially given the very real barriers to data collection, to make any claims contrary to what years of peer-reviewed science has spelled out clearly: buildings and night illumination are a deadly mix for migrating birds.

As the precautionary principle has long reminded us: absence of evidence for a particular problem does not equal evidence of absence.
Since 1970, bird populations in the United States and Canada have declined by 29 percent, or almost 3 billion birds, signaling a widespread ecological crisis. 3 Billion Birds video.
What If We Lived Like This Was Mass Extinction?

During the migratory bird resolution discussion in 2020, Councilmember Ana Sandoval emphasized the importance of responding to fast-collapsing bird populations by alluding to recent research, which has shown that total breeding adult bird populations in North America have crashed by 3 billion over the last 50 years - that's one-third of all of the avian life on the continent gone. Culprits range from outdoor cats, habitat fragmentation and loss, pesticide and herbicide use, and lights and building collisions. This disturbing revelation was the product of a massive effort involving seven research institutions across the United States and Canada. Unpacking that numbing truth in The New York Times, the heads of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Georgetown Environment Initiative stated that the findings suggest "the very fabric of North America's ecosystem is unraveling."

It's not just rare birds that are "disappearing," or birds known to be endangered or threatened, and thereby due some sort of state or federal protections. To the contrary, one of the more frightening elements of the study is that even our most common birds are in steep decline. While some species like the cattle egrets are thought to be growing in population today, birds of the heron family ( Ardeidae) have collectively declined 28 percent since 1970 in North America, the researchers found.

Meanwhile, the global climate summit in Glasgow has been awash in pledges and counterpledges related to deforestation. The deep interconnections between industrial overheating of the planet and the biodiversity crisis are beginning to get shared time. As Leah Gerber, director of the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes at Arizona State University, bluntly told The Washington Post: " Nature is in a state of collapse."

So, we've been asking ourselves while assembling this piece, what if we organized our lives and governed our city as if that were truly the case?

Knowing that, by one measure, dirty fuels are destroying birds at 30 times the rate of often-lambasted wind farms, would we tolerate a situation wherein the best public expressions of concern for fellow beings, such as our now-annual Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival, accept sponsorship from Valero Energy - one of the largest climate offenders in the US that has, moreover, actively worked to prevent climate action?

Probably not.

For his part, Bexar Audubon's Coleman struggles with questions of urgency while recognizing the severity of the issue far more than most.

"As San Antonio expands and grows the problem will only go in one direction: worse. Now would be a good time to be thinking about procedures and regulations we may want to consider to minimize bird strikes going forward," he said.

So why delay action seeking a Lights Out proclamation?

"I don't think we have a strong enough data set to be adamant with the city at this point," he said, "but I do think we have data where we can have a meaningful conversation to set the agenda for deeper conversations as we go forward."

Though the December proclamation seemed to suggest the city council would be amenable to an effort like Lights Out, Coleman is resistant to pressing them for policy change:

"I'm not going to initiate a jump-up-and-down campaign on something like this. There are a lot of things that deserve a jump-up-and-down campaign. But in my mind this isn't one of them," he said.

The hundreds of children stranded in the Texas foster care system without homes, he said, deserve such a campaign.

"That's a jump-up-and-down problem. That's super serious. This is super serious too because this is more insidious. It is slower and less obvious. The fact that our biodiversity is being damaged. The long-term consequences of that are horrid. It's very very important. But where is its urgency in comparison with other issues? That is something that I struggle with. I personally consider it most important and urgent, but how do you communicate that urgency in the eyes of people who have to deal with life-and-death situations?"

But what climate and environmental justice mean - versus conservation narrowly - is that the way we treat our more-than-human relatives cannot be disentangled from how we treat our most vulnerable human relatives. That care is not a zero-sum game, in other words.

Lynn Cuny, the founder of Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation, suggests as much in describing her decades of work picking up the broken bodies left behind by bad development decisions. Her position as the Greater San Antonio's region's destination for injured wildlife - including dozens of injured and abandoned juvenile birds during the Bird Island demolition - has taken a toll.

She urged people to shift their focus "from the 'face in the mirror' to those other lives who live on this planet."

"It remains a mystery to me how any non-human animal is left standing after the decades of pollution and all myriad assaults foisted on them by our self-centered lifestyles," she told Deceleration. "The fact that climate change has not truly grabbed our attention tells me that nothing will."

Likewise, for Rosie Torres, a dancer and choreographer involved with the Society for Native Nations and as a danzante with the Kalpulli Ayolopaktzin Azteca community, birds are family from an Indigenous perspective, a coequal branch in the created order. "Our feathered relatives are in peril," Torres said. "From across Turtle Island, migratory paths are being distorted by air pollution, flight pollution, climate change, and urban sprawl. This little habitat in San Antonio is only a link in the chain. If we break this link, it's only a matter of time before the ripple effects affect us."

In such a world, turning off the damn lights at night is the least we can do. "It's energy savings," Audubon Houston conservation specialist Anna Vallery points out, in addition to the positive impact the Lights Out program has had on "birds, insects, bats ... impacted by artificial light at night. To my mind there is no downside."

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San Antonio Snoozing on 'Lights Out' Bird Campaign - WhoWhatWhy

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This story by Greg Harman & Marisol Cortez or iginally appeared in Deceleration and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now , a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. It was spring migration, and millions of birds from across Mexico and Central and South America were chugging north along their annual route.

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AUSTIN - Global climate change poses a significant threat to migratory bird populations, which are already stressed by the loss of habitat and environmental pollution, according to a report released Thursday.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar joined scientists and conservation organizers at an Austin news conference to release the study, "The State of the Birds: 2010 Report on Climate Change."

The report says oceanic birds, such as petrels and albatrosses, are at particular risk from a rapidly changing marine ecosystem and rising sea levels.

Birds in arid regions and forests show less vulnerability to climate change, but the report says many species struggling in arid regions now, including the endangered golden-cheeked warbler and black-capped vireo in Texas, could be further imperiled by shifting climate conditions.

"Birds are messengers that tell us what is going on in our environment," Salazar said. "For too long, in my view, we have stood idle as the climate changes and as the crisis has grown."

A 2009 report on bird populations found nearly a third of the United States' 800 bird species are endangered, threatened or in decline due to challenges such as the loss of wetlands, commercial hunting and pesticides.

Last year's "State of the Birds" report also mentioned climate change as a threat to birds. But the 2010 report focuses on that factor as a significant danger to their habitats and food supplies.

All 67 ocean bird species in U.S. waters are at medium to high vulnerability to climate change, according to the study. Seabirds tend to have low reproductive potential and often nest on islands that can be inundated by rising sea levels, changes in water chemistry and other disruptions to the marine ecosystem. Hawaiian birds are among those in greatest peril.

The report cites increased threats to bird populations from deeper and longer droughts, more intense flooding, hotter fire seasons and other weather phenomena associated with climate change.

In Texas, Republican Gov. Rick Perry and his appointees to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, have expressed skepticism about the science linking climate change and carbon emissions and are fighting federal efforts to force industrial facilities to curb emissions.

Salazar said he expected vigorous discussion about how to deal with climate change, but he told reporters there was no point in talking about whether it's happening.

"I think the debate about whether or not climate change is occurring is a debate that is over," Salazar said. "I think the scientific community is unanimous in its opinion that we are seeing climate change upon us. We would be foolhardy not to move forward and to address the impacts of climate change."

The report makes several suggestions for mitigating the negative impact on birds, including habitat restoration, the creation of new wildlife refuges, regulations to reduce bird kills in fishing operations and the reduction of greenhouse gases.

Miyoko Chu, director of communications for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, who was on the team that assembled the report, said the study was not "all doom and gloom." She said some bird populations have shown an ability to adapt to changing climate conditions and stressed that research and monitoring programs held promise for preventing further declines.

"When doctors can detect symptoms early, they can save lives," Chu said. "And when conservationists can detect problems early enough, they can prevent extinction."

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Interior: Climate change threatens migratory birds

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AUSTIN - Global climate change poses a significant threat to migratory bird populations, which are already stressed by the loss of habitat and environmental pollution, according to a report released Thursday. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar joined scientists and conservation organizers at an Austin news conference to release the study, "The State of the Birds: 2010 Report on Climate Change."

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What kind of impact does human migration impact Ocelots' home range?

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What kind of impact does human migration impact Ocelots' home range?