A single cottonwood tree remains standing in the path of President Donald Trump’s border wall as it cuts through Lochiel, Arizona, activists camped out by the tree told USA TODAY on July 28.
The tree estimated to be between 100 and 200 years old is the last remaining of a cluster of cottonwoods that stood along the planned border wall route in the remote Arizona town. Three others were torn down by Department of Homeland Security contractors on July 27.
Lochiel is a remote former border town two hours south of Tucson. The site has become a ghost town in the decades since the border crossing closed in the 1980s. But for conservationists, the cottonwoods and surrounding area are worth protecting for their many other residents, including antelope,
bighorn sheep and potentially jaguar.
"It’s this incredible habitat that anchors the ecosystem," borderlands conservation activist Kate Scott told USA TODAY of the line of cottonwoods running up from Mexico and over the border in Arizona. "It’s an indicator that there’s water here and all that comes with that. It’s its own universe."
She added: "It’s ecocide… We have to call it that because they’re devastating the environment, they know full well what they’re doing and they don’t care."
Scott, a longtime opponent of Trump’s wall as it cuts through the wild parts of the nation’s Southwest, has spent about the past six weeks camped out by the cottonwoods, aiming to keep Homeland Security contractors from cutting down the trees she calls "the grandmothers."
At least one person has been arrested in connection with protests against bulldozing the trees to build the border walls, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.
The cottonwood, Scott said, is a symbol for the kind of disregard for nature she sees happening up and down the border, from the Trump administration’s efforts to raise a border wall through Big Bend in Texas to the destruction of a 1000-year-old Native American archaeological site several hours west of Lochiel.
Border Patrol told USA TODAY in a statement July 28 that the cottonwoods stand on federal land and "needed removal for planned border wall construction." An agency spokesperson said the cottonwood removal was done with environmental monitors present and was done in a way to ensure no legally protected birds would be disturbed.
The Sierra Club disputes the Homeland Security agency’s account of how the cottonwood removal is being carried out, saying there were no environmental monitors present and that there was a legally protected Cassin’s kingbird actively nesting in one of the cottonwoods.
Opponents of the wall say the structure will eventually threaten some of the rare species that make the American Southwest so special, including jaguar and wolves.
"The wildlife and ecosystems do not recognize the border and would otherwise be moving back and forth, but now are cut off," Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, told USA TODAY.
She added that animals caught between staggered sections of border wall will likely die, the wall threatens to obstruct critical water flows and concertina wire laid down along the wall "is quite literally a death trap for wildlife."
Activists on the ground have described seeing animals bleed to death after being caught in the razor-sharp concertina wire.
Scott said she and other activists in the area plan to continue camping by the remaining cottonwood tree as long as they can. At a minimum she hopes Homeland Security will choose to build the wall along a route that doesn’t entail destroying trees nearly as old as the nation.
At best she hopes the people taking charge of securing the nation’s border will take a lesson from the ancient trees that up until July 27 stretched over the border and leaned on cottonwoods on the Mexican side for support.
"Us as humans could take a little chapter out of their book about coexisting," Scott said. "Why are we making it so hard for one another instead of saying, 'Hey let’s work together.'"
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Activists defend century-old tree standing in way of Trump’s border wall
