The topic of the
border wall between the United States and Mexico continues. By now, broad segments of the population have
heard widely varying opinions about the wall’s effect on undocumented
immigration, international politics, and the drug war. What about the wall’s
effect on the Sonoran pronghorn antelope herds and the kit fox, the Mexican
gray wolf, the ocelot, the jaguar, and the bighorn sheep?
In this presentation, Krista Schlyer
will discuss her 8-year documentary project about the US-Mexico borderlands. A
region stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, which hosts a
number of rare ecosystems. One of Arizona’s last free-flowing rivers, the San
Pedro; the grasslands of New Mexico, some of the last undeveloped prairies on
the continent; a mega-diverse diverse birding area located along the lower Rio
Grande River in Texas; and habitat and migration corridors for some of both
nations’ most imperiled species.
In documenting the changes to the ecosystems and human communities along the
border while the wall was being built, Schlyer realized that the impacts of
immigration policy on wildlife, on landowners, and on-border towns were not
fully understood by either policy makers or the general public. This
presentation will discuss the natural and human history of the borderlands; the
history of border policy; the unthinkable human consequences of border
militarization; and the current immigration debate as it pertains to borderlands
ecosystems, wildlife, and the people who call this region home.