Defend Wilderness along the southern border

The desert ecosystems of the southern border region are biological hotspots with tremendous biodiversity, providing habitat to over 1,500 native animal and plant species—many of which are threatened or endangered.

Five designated Wilderness areas are also found along the U.S. border with Mexico—the Cabeza Prieta, Jacumba, Organ Pipe Cactus, Otay Mountain, and Pajarita.

A bill reintroduced in the U.S. House on March 4—the “FLASH Act” (H.R. 1820)—would amend the Wilderness Act to allow more destructive activities within Wilderness areas along the southern border, at great expense to ecosystems throughout the region.

In the last Congress, Wilderness Watch joined 40 organizations dedicated to environmental protection, civil and human rights, tribal government, and community support, to express our significant concerns about this bill. H.R. 1820 is almost identical to its predecessor in the last Congress, and our concerns remain unchanged.

Specifically, Section 102 of H.R. 1820 purports to amend the Wilderness Act for search and rescue operations and to conduct patrols on horseback and on foot, but the Wilderness Act already provides for these activities.

In reality, section 102 of H.R. 1820 would essentially eliminate Wilderness on the southern border by amending the Wilderness Act so it doesn't apply to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Troublingly, the bill would allow otherwise prohibited activities in Wilderness for the purported purpose of "securing international land borders" for up to 10 miles away from the border, including:

• Constructing and maintaining roads and other structures that the bill calls "physical barriers" (i.e., walls);

• Allowing "tactical infrastructure and technology," which is a broad and undefined term, as well as motorized equipment;

• Allowing motor vehicles and motorboats for access to structures, installations, and roads; and aircraft to fly through the airspace above Wilderness and to land and take-off in Wilderness; and

• Allowing "access" to the structures, installations, and roads, including those permitted above, via motor vehicles and motorboats.

Section 103 of H.R. 1820 would even deputize states to place "movable, temporary" structures on public lands, including in Wilderness, requiring states to merely notify the federal government of this action. This section allows these temporary structures to persist in Wilderness—and on all federal public land—for a year, with low hurdles designed to easily authorize their continued existence into the future.

While we have no illusions that protecting the border is easy, it needs to be done humanely and without destroying our nation’s natural heritage of Wilderness and wildlife. There is already a buffer zone between designated Wilderness and the southern border, and it’s within that buffer that the activities contemplated in the FLASH Act, if they are necessary at all, need to occur.

Clearly these types of structures and motorized, quasi-military style activities have no place in the Cabeza Prieta, Jacumba, Organ Pipe Cactus, Otay Mountain, and Pajarita Wildernesses!