Bulldozers broke ground Thursday in Big Bend National Park on a White House project to add border barriers and patrol roads inside the protected wilderness, according to activists and ecological groups.
Contractors begin the construction amid widespread bipartisan opposition, plowing through native vegetation along the Rio Grande’s riparian corridor, according to video footage shared with the Center of Biological Diversity by conservationist and photographer Natalie Newman.
“This is the most heinous attack on an American national park in generations,” Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement shared to Instagram. “The administration is preparing to blast hundreds of miles of destructive roads through the wildest place left in Texas and cut off public access to the Rio Grande, all to enrich private contractors.”
The work inside Big Bend is unprecedented, both in cost and disregard for existing environmental protections.
In May, the Department of Homeland Security awarded New Mexico-based Southwest Valley Constructors with $1.7 billion for the project — at the time, the government’s largest-ever contract for border wall construction. DHS has awarded $7 billion for border wall construction contracts in the Big Bend Sector overall.
In June, DHS waved dozens of environmental laws to clear the way for the construction project. It was the first time in U.S. history that the federal government waived such a broad set of environmental protections for construction inside a national park.
In response, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Department of Homeland Security. That case is ongoing.
According to Customs and Border Protection’s online map, the agency plans to build vehicle barriers and patrol roads throughout some of the park’s most rugged and remote canyon country. Those areas include Mariscal Mountain, where dynamite blasting will be required to clear the path, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
Southwest Valley Constructors — which specializes in large-scale construction projects for the federal government — previously used dynamite in Arizona wilderness areas, spurring a lawsuit after local ranchers claimed the explosions hurled “car-sized boulders” onto their property.
Building is also planned for walled canyons which are inaccessible from the Mexico border and where no unauthorized vehicle crossings have been reported, Center for Biological Diversity’s Jordahl added.
The U.S. Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector covers 517 miles of the U.S.–Mexico border along the Rio Grande. Big Bend National Park accounts for about 118 miles of this international boundary. However, the park accounts for fewer than 0.045% of the nation’s border apprehensions, according to CBP data.
Thus, activists argue, there is little to no reason to mar such a treasured landscape.
“Big Bend belongs to us all, and sacrificing it is a betrayal of every Texan and every American who believes our national parks should be protected,” Jordahl continued. “We won’t stop fighting this reckless assault on Big Bend National Park and America’s national heritage until this destruction ends.”
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