The Wall: A Crime Against Creation

Paddlers on the Rio Grande River

And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: 
cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.’ 
And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind,
 and the cattle of every kind, 
and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. 
And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1 NRSV 

The self-appointed Supreme Being Trump has been crowing about the impregnability of the wall under construction along the US-Mexico border. The problem is that as billions of dollars are spent, climbers, including an eight-year-old girl, have demonstrated that it is scalable in minutes. And smugglers are using basic power tools to cut holes in the not-so-big, not-so-beautiful structure. 

I have touched on another story which is not so widely reported, which is the significant environmental damage being done by the construction. My previous blog was about the degradation of a butterfly sanctuary. Now bulldozers have ploughed through the , an International Biosphere Reserve. The saguaro cacti which we associate with North American desert wilderness are being shoved aside. In recent years jaguars have been moving back into the southern states from Mexico but the wall will cut the few adventurous males from the female population.  



Destruction in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

And in an article called What Happens When you Wall Off a River? we're told that a section of the wall will run along the Rio Grande river effectively cutting off a corridor of water and wildlife, as well as expropriating land owned by some families for generations. To build the wall in Starr County, at least 10 wildlife refuge tracts — all part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge — will be destroyed.

This ridiculous monument to xenophobia is a crime against Creation, as well as desperate humans seeking sanctuary. Biodiversity is celebrated in the first book of the Judeo-Christian bible yet somehow millions of American Christians support a president whose administration defiles the environment at every turn. God help them.