03/15/2026
Big Bend borders Mexico, separated by the Rio Grande. It is a national treasure, not a place for bulldozers and walls.
This region is one of the most remote landscapes in the United States—over 800,000 acres of protected desert, mountains, and river canyons that support rare wildlife, dark night skies, and one of the most biologically diverse desert ecosystems in North America.
Building border walls in this terrain would require blasting rock, cutting roads through fragile desert habitat, and permanently disrupting wildlife migration routes for species like black bears, mountain lions, javelina, and pronghorn. Many animals depend on the ability to move freely across the river corridor to survive in this harsh environment.
It also comes at enormous financial cost to taxpayers while solving little. The Rio Grande itself is already a natural barrier through much of Big Bend, and the extreme remoteness of the area means crossings there are rare compared with other parts of the border.
What would be lost, however, is significant:
– fragile desert ecosystems
– wildlife corridors that have existed for thousands of years
– one of the darkest night skies in the world
– a landscape preserved for future generations
Big Bend is one of the last places in the United States where you can experience true wilderness—where the silence of the desert, the sweep of the Chisos Mountains, and the winding Rio Grande remind us how small we are in the presence of nature.
Some places should remain protected from unnecessary development.
Big Bend is one of them.