A national treasure, the largest butterfly sanctuary in the United States could be sacrificed for Trump's dream of a border wall. Insane doesn't begin to describe what is going on, all made perfectly legal through the auspices of Homeland Security which can bypass any number of Environmental protections put in place because Trump's wall has become an issue of national security.
Even Libertarians are disgusted with this land grab based on eminent domain, as the video above details. Landowners and those who benefit from the millions of tourism dollars are also worried about their livelihoods.
Just willful stupidity and ignorance.
Source: EcoWatch
The National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas is the most diverse butterfly sanctuary in the U.S. Some 200 species of butterflies find a home there each year, including the Mexican bluewing, the black swallowtail and the increasingly imperiled monarch. And, as soon as February, almost 70 percent of it could be lost to President Donald Trump's border wall, The Guardian reported Thursday.
"It's going to cut right through here," Center Director Marianna Wright told The Guardian as she indicated where the wall's construction would cut off the center's access to its own land in the Rio Grande Valley at a point 1.2 miles from the border. Wright said the wall threatened to end the center entirely and harm the butterflies and other species like the Texas tortoise, Texas indigo snake and Texas horned lizard that also find refuge on its land.
The center's fate was sealed Dec. 3, when, Reuters reported, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and Defenders of Wildlife appealing a federal court decision that the Trump administration can waive 28 environmental laws including the Endangered Species Act in order to build 33 more miles of wall.
The wall will be as many as three stories tall and construction in the butterfly refuge could begin as soon as February, The San Antonio Express-News reported.
I've used "insane" and "perverse" to describe this. The San Antonio Express-News called the situation "absurd".
There are less expensive and more effective ways to secure the border than plowing through a butterfly sanctuary or disrupting the movement of wildlife. And there are ways to offer border security without disrespecting private property rights.
Instead, taxpayers are funding a border wall that is not on the border, and will cut through private property.
This butterfly wall is a monument to absurdity.
Recalling Joni Mitchell's song Big Yellow Taxi.
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
