Bush’s ‘supersize Berlin wall’ stops jaguars from returning to the USA

This is a video about jaguars and the “supersized Berlin Wall” betwen the USA and Mexico.

From the New Zealand Herald:

Security fences prevent jaguars coming home

Monday August 20, 2007

By Peter Huck

The jaguars are coming home. Until recently the big cats, which evolved in North America, then spread south, were rarely seen in the United States.

The last known female was shot in 1963. But over the past decade at least four jaguars, probably males and identified from photographs by the unique rosette patterns on their fur, have padded north via a wildlife corridor of “sky islands,” mountains that straddle the border, into southern Arizona and New Mexico.

But the cats, protected by the US Endangered Species Act, may become victims of America’s paranoia about illegal immigration and national security, as the Department of Homeland Security moves to seal the US-Mexico border.

“It’s potentially catastrophic for the species’ recovery prospects in the northern part of its range,” explains Michael Robinson, who monitors jaguars for the Centre for Biological Diversity.

Steel fences, which have begun to appear along part of the 3138km border, would strand existing jaguars in the US, prevent others from increasing the nascent population, and limit the cat’s gene pool.

Last June, the American Society of Mammalogists said jaguars could survive in the US only if they could roam across the border. This charismatic animal is one of 30 species – including pronghorn antelope, ocelots, bears and wolves – environmentalists say would suffer from a solid fence.

This barrier would also devastate ecosystems, repaired in schemes costing millions of dollars, and wreck bustling eco-tourism in struggling communities.

See also here.

And here.

And here.

AFL-CIO blog on this: here.

US wildlife agency killed 1.6 million animals in 2006: here.

Immigrant detainees dying in US custody: here.