Old photo of bear on Arizona border wall is recirculating. Experts say wildlife issue is worse today
A photo showing a black bear scaling the border wall in southern Arizona has gone viral on social media. The small bear can be seen perched on a sheet on metal that tops a row of metal bollards. The image was actually captured by a Border Patrol agent back in 2018 near the small Arizona town of Naco, and the wall in question is an older, shorter structure that predates the 30-foot steel bollard wall built by the Trump administration.
Emily Burns, program director with conservation group Sky Island Alliance says it's an issue that’s only gotten worse for border wildlife.
"We have detected multiple instances of American black bear on the border road, next to the border wall, both the older 18-foot border wall and the 30-foot newer wall," she said.
In October, Burn’s group captured footage of another young black bear pacing up and down a section of border wall in Cochise County for hours, trying to find an opening. Burns says her group’s wildlife cameras have never shown bears successfully climbing the wall. Even if they did, she says they’d likely have a hard time getting back down safely.
The black bear’s range stretches into northern Mexico, and they typically cross back and forth for food and water. It's one of several large and small species who have habitat on both sides of the border.
Russ McSpadden, southwest conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, says images wildlife trapped at the U.S.-Mexico border are a powerful reminder of the perils wildlife face.
"They evoke a lot of emotions in people, they provide a clear example that walls can disrupt migratory patterns, and it can be heartbreaking to see wildlife try to navigate and get turned back by what is essentially a huge prison wall across the ecosystem," he said. "The images can challenge us emotionally, and even politically to consider human domination over the environment, and our role as stewards ... there's a great number of threatened and endangered species populations that are being pushed closer to the brink of oblivion by the rise of border walls all over the planet."
The Trump administration built its 30-foot steel bollard wall across more than 450 miles of the Arizona-Sonora border.
McSpadden says swaths of border are also lined with spools of razor wire, including in the Naco area, where the 2018 photo was captured. He says those changes make it even harder for all kinds of wildlife — from bears and mountain lions, to roadrunners and deer — to get through.
