“To save the entire environment: wilderness protection, proper use of parks, breakdown of Federal operation of the parks in favor of private interests, acquiring new park and wilderness land, unrestrained oil drilling and mining on land and offshore, etc. First on the list now is that all the wilderness areas must be protected. It is very important. With the current Administration, they are gravely threatened. It means that the small inroads this country has made in protecting some areas, both for scenic beauty and for invaluable resources, are threatened.
Here is an important point: Only two and a half percent of the land in this country is protected. Not only are we being fought in trying to extend that two and a half percent to include other important or fragile areas but we are having to fight to protect that small two and a half percent. It is horrifying that we have to fight our own Government to save our environment.Our worst enemy is the person the President designated with the responsibility of managing the country’s environment: James Watt. No wonder it is a monumental battle. “
Ansel Adams in a 1983 Playboy interview:
Here we are 36 years later and we are fighting the same fights. We went to the border for several reasons(birding, avoiding winter etc.), but mainly so I could bring back some photos of the beauty of this area, and stories of what we stand to lose if a 30 foot border wall is built along the Texas border.
Our first stop was along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline to South Padre Island.
Back in the Fall of 1988 Mike and I had taken a Thanksgiving trip with the goal of going to Padre Island. We only managed to get down to Galveston before we had to head back. We spent hours driving along the elevated roadways across the bayous of Louisiana with many fond memories.
This time we only had two stops for the night before ending up at a little county campground on the mainland, with South Padre nearby. As we traveled along the shore, flocks of White and Brown Pelicans were migrating overhead. We avoided the National Park on Padre Island due to the government shut down and went out to the county parks further south.
These areas are far enough from the proposed wall project that they will not really be affected by it, but land just south and west of here has been set aside as Wildlife Refuges and will be some of the first areas where walls and fences are built if the project is allowed to proceed. This requires clearing large areas of, already rare, native habitat for roads and observation areas. Less than 5% of Texas’ natural vegetation areas exist today, and much of that is “protected” in National Wildlife refuges along the border. They will be some of the first areas to be bulldozed for roads and wall construction as 28 laws are waived for its construction.
After spending a day on the island we decided to head inland. The wind was supposed to be letting up so it was time to head to the National Butterfly Reserve, a privately held conservation area dedicated to conserving butterflies and other native wildlife in southern Texas. If the wall is built the park will be cut in half…
