in violation of the Convention on Migratory Species
November 17, 2022 7:42 PM Subscribe
Is there rigorous work discussing the unguarded fences effectiveness? It's likely humans always by pass them pretty easily, ala Slovenia-Croatia example. Assuming so, maybe this provides the strongest political case against them, especially if evidence for more effective human deterrents exists.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:09 AM on November 18, 2022
posted by jeffburdges at 5:09 AM on November 18, 2022
Walls are a thing that a politician can point to and say "See! It's a thing I did!" Then massage the data to say it's effective and then use it as a cudgel to hit the other side with not building enough of them or building them wrong. The redirection of resources to a contractor to build a thing that does nothing is a bonus.
posted by kzin602 at 8:48 AM on November 18, 2022
posted by kzin602 at 8:48 AM on November 18, 2022
Mostly political / historical but The Edge of the Plain: how Borders Make and Break Our World =100secs [2022] by James Crawford ranges over the world looking at the un/intended consequences of physically keeping people Out . . . or In. Like:
In the Sonoran Desert, a super-fragile ecosystem shared by Mexico and the USA, the human victims number in the hundreds. They have been forced to trek through a desert at night because the US border patrol acts performatively in El Paso to show that it will be impossible to cross the border there where you can get a bus to the edge of Mexico almost spit across the Rio Grande. Walls across the desert and relentless roving Border Patrol ATVs, not to mention a USAF bombing range, have more or less driven the Sonora pronghorn antelope Antilocapra americana sonoriensis to extinction.
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:43 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
In the Sonoran Desert, a super-fragile ecosystem shared by Mexico and the USA, the human victims number in the hundreds. They have been forced to trek through a desert at night because the US border patrol acts performatively in El Paso to show that it will be impossible to cross the border there where you can get a bus to the edge of Mexico almost spit across the Rio Grande. Walls across the desert and relentless roving Border Patrol ATVs, not to mention a USAF bombing range, have more or less driven the Sonora pronghorn antelope Antilocapra americana sonoriensis to extinction.
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:43 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
I do wonder how humans' past migratory habits supports our current tendency towards destroying our environment. Although enough crash to extinction, island bound animals often adapt to their constrained environment, like by their birthrate declining, and hence their vulnerability to invasive species.
As a species, we'll need some similar adaptation but at a planetary scale somehow. We'll need our culture to really capture Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot quote “The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate.”
posted by jeffburdges at 10:02 AM on November 19, 2022
As a species, we'll need some similar adaptation but at a planetary scale somehow. We'll need our culture to really capture Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot quote “The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate.”
posted by jeffburdges at 10:02 AM on November 19, 2022
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This man should have been head of a US Biological Service. Newt Gingrich intervened. Great to hear his advocacy for the Jaguar. Why wouldn't Texans want Jaguars? A big state deserves Big Cats.
posted by eustatic at 8:26 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]