Unintended Consequences of Trump’s New Wall

January 26, 2017 – When you build a wall to keep out people you also create unintended consequences including changes to the environment, wildlife migration and water flow. In the latest executive order, President Donald Trump has told U.S. Homeland Security to start fulfilling the election pledge to secure the Mexican border by building a wall. Architects call the project “pharaonic.” Ecologists and environmentalists call it a “tragedy.”

Why pharaonic?

Because the costs will be astronomical. Trump keeps telling the American people that Mexico will ultimately pay for the wall, not U.S. taxpayers. In saying this he hides the cost, tens of billions of dollars. And the pharaoh reference isn’t just about the size of the project, it is also a statement about the utility of pyramid building. Building them didn’t get pharaohs to heaven, and Trump’s people stopper (he used “alternative facts,” videos not from the Mexican border, but from North Africa where immigrants skirted border fences on the way to Mediterranean crossings) will have little effect on people getting into the United States, not that many are coming from Mexico these days.

Why a tragedy?

States Dan Mills, Program Manager with the Sierra Club‘s Borderland project, “In terms of climate adaptation, building a border wall is an act of self-sabotage….And the reason I say that is we’re already seeing wildlife migrations blocked with the current walls and fences that have already been built. We have hundreds of these walls that were built without…environmental protections.”

When Israel built a wall to separate its population from Palestinians living in the West Bank, it impacted water supply in a region of water scarcity. The building of the wall removed olive and fruit orchards. Removing the trees caused groundwater levels to drop. A United Nations study reported in 2012 the unintended non-human consequences of the wall, describing land degradation, particularly on the Palestinian side of the barrier. Farming, pastures and wildlife were all impacted. So a wall, intended to keep people out, has unanticipated consequences.

Israel’s wall, seen above, is a popgun compared to Trump’s planned Brownsville to San Diego edifice. The cement to build it will produce significant greenhouse gases and further exacerbate efforts by the United States to reduce the country’s carbon footprint. Mind you, with Trump in office carbon reduction has probably gone by the wayside for at least four years, or until the American people wake up and realize they put a nut job in the White House.

The current hodgepodge of border walls and fences, a portion seen above, is already contributing to erosion and flooding along the border with Mexico. Wildlife migration corridors are disrupted. The Center for Biological Diversity has noted wolves, ocelots and jaguars near current barrier walls and fences. This isolation of natural animal populations will deplete gene pools and impact long-term survival of species.

States Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the Center, “like many of Trump’s ideas, this one has nothing to do with reality….there is no reason to sacrifice the health of border communities and wildlife for such political grandstanding.”

Besides the wall won’t stop those who want to get across. There are alternative means to achieve that.