A new mapping project shows the areas of Arizona’s borderlands that are in need of restoration after the former Trump administration stripped the region to build a new border wall.
The Biden administration has said it wants to use federal funds to restore areas where the previous administration installed new, higher walls along the Mexican border. The nonprofit Wildlands Network says it’s identified several areas in Arizona and New Mexico where that should happen. The group’s borderlands coordinator Myles Traphagen explained how they selected some of those areas.
"Well a lot of the places that were in the map were dynamited. Basically using mountaintop removal methods that you would find in mining in places like Arizona and Sonora," he said.
Those spots include swaths of the border region west of Nogales, along the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in the west desert and areas like the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge southwest of Tucson.
Traphagen points out those areas include lands that were supposed to be protected by the U.S. government itself.
