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If pronghorns, ocelots, and jaguars could vote, Hillary Clinton would
get an additional boost in Arizona and Texas. That’s because, aside
from questions of feasibility and political impacts, the Great Wall of
Guadalupe Hidalgo that Donald Trump promises to build would have a
devastating impact on these and other four-legged border jumpers.
Likewise the endangered subspecies of black bear that inhabits the
borderlands along the Rio Grande. These bears, which have been nearly
extirpated in Texas but hang on in the Mexican states of Coahuila and
Chihuahua, are much rarer and shyer than their prolific northern
cousins—hardly cut out for a world of helicopters, searchlights, and
high-powered rifles.
The region’s next-largest carnivore, on the other hand, has shown a
remarkable determination to keep coming north against all odds. Jaguars,
the third-largest of the big cats, aren’t just jungle cats. They once
ranged widely across the Southwest and Southeast. But what was thought
to be the last wild jaguar in the United States—a female—was shot in
1963. Over the past two decades, however, one after another male tigre has been spotted or recorded by trap cameras wandering north in a vain search for mates.
Federal officials, picking their battles amidst vehement resistance
from ranchers, have declined to import female jaguars or designate
critical jaguar habitat. But biologists suspect that climate change is already driving
not just jaguars but ocelots, coatis, javelinas, brown-nosed opossums
and hog-nosed skunks northward. As warming continues, refuges north of
the border will become increasingly important for many Mexican
species—if fences and walls don’t hold them back.
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