Called the “devils rope” by the indigenous peoples populating the Western Prairies, few inventions served to establish the property ownership economy than barbed wire, and with it, the near extinction of wildlife like the bison, bringing catastrophic consequences for native cultures.
In its modern version, the giant coiled steel concertina wire, known as razor wire because of its deadly spikes, is fast becoming emblematic of the U.S./Mexico borderlands across the nation, maiming, killing and fragmenting the habitat of migratory animals and birds.
Despite acknowledged sensitivity of the habitat in Marron Valley, owned by the city of San Diego for over 100 years, Marines recently tasked with what was surely unpleasant duty began laying concertina wire 30 feet from the border wall, stomping on rare plants and blocking city access to survey the biological impacts.
So potentially lethal is this wire to endangered and threatened habitat in San Diego’s protected open space preserves, the city of San Diego is hauling the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Navy and Border Patrol into court seeking an injunction to end trespassing on the sensitive lands.
Named specifically in the litigation is former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, a ringleader of the group responsible for the borderlands reign of terror. If you can kill your 14-month-old puppy, why worry about endangered peninsular bighorn sheep, jaguars and low-flying raptors.
Writing in a press release supporting the litigation, the San Diego Sierra Club chapter applauded the city’s unusual step to aggressively defend land protected under agreements with the federal government through the nationally lauded Multiple Species Conservation Plan permitted under the ever-threatened Endangered Species Act.
It was unusual because the city has been criticized over decades for failing to enforce or in some cases even develop management plans for its network of connected habitat preserves as required under those agreements.
The largely successful environmental and housing conservation planning began under the administration of then-Mayor Susan Golding in the mid-1990s. The conservation plan was negotiated among stakeholders that included environmental and recreational groups, housing developers, and property owners, creating networks of preserves connected by wildlife corridors, avoiding the deadly habitat fragmentation of earlier development plans.