Border Fence Seen As Threat to Wildlife - AP

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Border Fence Seen As Threat to Wildlife
By LYNN BREZOSKY, Associated Press Writer
10:39 AM PDT, May 21, 2007

ALAMO, Texas -- Nancy Brown drives the government truck
slowly past mossy ponds, thick shrouds of beard-like Spanish
moss and majestic ebony trees, gleefully identifying the song
of the kiskadee and the gurgling call of the chachalaca.

As the truck rounds a bend near the greenish-brown Rio
Grande, a bobcat scampers ahead, disappearing into the lush
subtropical foliage. Lizards dart about. A tortoise lazes in the
sun. Somewhere in the forest, well-camouflaged by evolution,
are ocelots and jaguarundi, both of them endangered species
of cats.

These are some of the natural wonders in the Rio Grande Valley
that Brown and other wildlife enthusiasts fear could be spoiled
by the fences and adjacent roads the U.S. government plans to
erect along the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants
and smugglers.

Environmentalists have spent decades acquiring and preserving
90,000 riverfront acres of Texas scrub and forest and protecting
their wildlife. Now they fear the hundreds of miles of border
fences will undo their work and kill some land animals by cutting
them off from the Rio Grande, the only source of fresh water.

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Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-border-fence-wildlife,1,1451383.story