Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Border Wall To Cause Animal Extinctions?

                 A university study “has revealed,” according to Fox News, that “at least” 800 species of wildlife will be “adversely affected” by “president Trump’s planned 2,000-mile border wall with Mexico.” Research published by the Mexican National Autonomous University, “Mexico’s top university,” according to the Fox News post, shows that “an impassable physical barrier placed into ecosystems inhabited by jaguars, black bears, and bighorn sheep will so disrupt patterns of migration as to cause a natural catastrophe.” This is obvious hyperbole, much like the phrase, “Mexico’s top university.” Professor Gerardo Ceballos led the study and purportedly told Fox News, “Wildlife has populated these regions for millions of years, and has always had freedom of movement to hunt, reproduce and migrate. To make these animals suffer as a result of man’s political agenda is entirely immoral.”
                Translation: “Mexicans have populated these regions for thousands of years, and have always had freedom of movement to hunt, reproduce, migrate, and smuggle humans and drugs across the border with impunity. Trump sucks.”
                The article goes on to state that 140 species that would be affected by Trump’s border wall are in danger of extinction, “including the bald eagle. Grey wolf, armadillo, and jaguar, a big cat of which remain only 10 in the highlands of the Sonora Desert that straddle (sic) Arizona. Those animals whose range will be halved by the border wall’s construction will be impeded in their ability to reproduce with other members of their species, thereby creating a shallower gene pool and heightening the chance of inbreeding.”

                What a load of rhetorical refuse.

                First off, the bald eagle- thankfully- is not in danger of extinction, but reason apparently is. Someone needs to inform “Mexico’s top university,” Fox News, or both, that bald eagles can fly, rendering a 15 or even 25-foot-tall wall spectacularly moot. And, if throughout the millennia, when there was no wall and open borders beckoned from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of California, the jaguar population was reduced to 10 animals, the wall won’t be a factor in their continued existence. How vast a track of land do 10 cats need to roam to reproduce? It seems quite likely that halving their range might make them more likely to find each other. Proximity is a key factor in reproduction- or so I’ve been told. (Hell, most wives hate it when their husbands roam and would keep them confined to the boudoir and the garage if they had their druthers. How different can cats be)?
                The Great Wall of China is over half the length of the friggin’ equator, an average of 25-feet-tall…and one of the most celebrated achievements in human history. What the hell? Where’s the outcry from environmentalists, animal-lovers, and top universities? Did China’s Great Wall cause wholesale extinctions and scientists just keep forgetting to bring it up?
                The United States could build the wall, and leave a series of, say, 50-yard-wide gaps in it, from one end to the other, in order to let animals pass through. These relatively few “animal checkpoints” could easily be watched to prevent illegals, drugs, and such from entering the country. In any case, the animals will be fine. But the wall must be built.

                Otherwise many, many U.S. citizens are in danger of becoming extinct.

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