'Kiss jaguars goodbye' in Arizona if border wall cuts off access from Mexico

[douglas9]

Two new sections of 30-foot-high border wall will be the end of the line for jaguars in Arizona, environmentalists and a former federal official say.

The planned expansions of the wall — one under construction, a second funded and nearly ready for contracting — will block the jaguar’s access to most of its federally designated prime habitat in Arizona.

And if access from Mexico is cut off, “you can kiss jaguars goodbye” in Arizona, said Steve Spangle. He oversaw federal management of the endangered cats in this country for 16 years, as head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Arizona Ecological Services office, before retiring in 2018.

“Without genetic rescue from Mexico, you are not going to have jaguars in the U.S. They can’t self-sustain here. Once that flow is cut off, I don’t think we’ll ever see jaguars here again,” Spangle said.

Those wall sections would also likely constitute a violation of federal law protecting critical jaguar habitat, Spangle said — if the Department of Homeland Security hadn’t obtained waivers from that law to streamline the wall’s construction.

Five male jaguars have been photographed in Arizona since 1996. That had raised hopes among jaguar advocates that a species previously thought extinct in the United States could be reestablished.

https://tucson.com/news/local/kiss-jaguars-goodbye-in-arizona-if-border-wall-cuts-off-access-from-mexico/article_fe64ba29-add9-55e4-81bc-3caf8bca6f86.html

[SheltieLover]

1. K&R

Pls xpost to GD? Not that we can do anything to stop him.

[in2herbs]

2. Until drump is replaced there is one huge section of the wall around Tucson that must

not be a wall so that the monsoon rains can flow. Hopefully the jaguars will use that transportation corridor until drump gets out of office and the whole wall will be torn down.