“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” —Wendell Berry
The desecration of Big Bend National Park in Texas began last week. The area is currently being invaded by federal contractors who are clearing out land to begin the construction of Trump’s “Smart Wall” in the region. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bypassed twenty-eight federal “environmental, cultural, and historical protection laws” to greenlight the plans for the Big Bend wall— twenty-eight! Big Bend National Park and neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park are part of a larger region that CBP is targeting for the construction of completely unnecessary and violent border infrastructure.
Even though the severe desert landscape straddling Texas and Mexico is a natural deterrent for border crossings, the Trump administration has been trying to paint a different picture using dehumanizing rhetoric to drum up fear that the case is otherwise. As the No Big Bend Wall coalition has written, “Remote and rugged, the region has historically limited crossings. A permanent barrier would industrialize public lands, harm river-based tourism and local livelihoods, reduce property values, destroy wildlife corridors and fragile arid and riparian habitats, diminish our dark skies, and damage irreplaceable archaeological sites along the Rio Grande corridor.” The “historically low crossing sector” of the greater Big Bend area accounted for only 1.3% of total apprehensions in 2025. Within Big Bend National Park, apprehensions were only 0.045% of the national total. The only thing justifying the objectively unnecessary infrastructure is propaganda from Trump’s administration.
The proposed vehicle barriers, patrol roads, and “detection technology” would do violence to the land, the water, the sky, and the beings who live in the area. As KVUE has reported: “plans for the border include hundreds of miles of paved road and vehicle barriers stretching into mountainous terrain. This would require dynamite blasting, which the Center [for Biological Diversity] says could maim or kill protected wildlife. Further, they argue that the mountains and walled canyons make barriers in the area redundant.”
Big Bend is part of the largest Dark Sky Certified place in the world. It is one of the increasingly rare places in the United States where the Milky Way can be seen with the naked eye. According to the No Big Bend Wall Coalition, proposed border infrastructure such as “high-wattage lighting, ‘smart fence’ technology along new patrol roads, [and] dust from construction could ruin the character of these skies for good.”
Opposition to Big Bend Border intrastructure is one of the rare issues that people from different sides of the political spectrum agree on. Outcries have come from republicans and democrats alike. No one wants this hateful “Smart Wall,” and democracy is actively being violated in its construction.
I write as someone who spent most of their life in Texas, so the Big Bend desecration hurts my heart especially hard. Yet Big Bend is not the only region in the United States currently facing destruction due to border wall construction. In Arizona’s San Rafael Valley, brave protesters are currently using their bodies as a shield in the one ancient Cottonwood tree left standing after others have already been cut down so the border wall can replace them. In New Mexico, groundwater wells along the border were drilled without state approval.
What can we do? A short list follows. Please use the comments section of this post to write other ideas or practical steps we can take to protect our lands, support the people on the front lines, and fight against further construction of the border wall.
● Sign the No Big Bend Wall Coalition’s letter to the Texas Park and Wildlife Commissioners to ask them to help protect Big Bend (their goal is 5,000 signatures by August 17th!)
● Sign the petition to oppose the construction of the wall in the Big Bend region
● Support Natalie Newman, who is on the ground documenting what is happening in Big Bend.
● Donate to the people on the ground in Lochiel, Arizona, fighting against the destruction of Cottonwood trees and surrounding land and sign the petition to oppose further destruction
● Donate to the Center for Biological Diversity to support their coverage of, and advocacy against, these border wall projects
● Regardless of where you live, call and write your representatives and urge them to oppose further border wall construction. This website is a handy way to quickly find a list of all of your representatives. The No Big Bend Wall Coalition provides a sample call script for both Texas residents and non-Texas residents, as well as a sample email script for the same.
This morning I returned to one of my favorite books, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience & Creative Power by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnston. Within its pages, I found these words of wisdom: “The Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh was once asked what we need to do to save our world. ‘What we most need to do,’ he replied, ‘is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying.’ The idea of the Earth crying within us, or through us, doesn’t make sense if we view ourselves only as separate individuals. Yet if we think of ourselves as deeply embedded in a larger web of life— as Gaia theory, Buddhism, and many other, especially Indigenous, spiritual traditions suggest— then the idea of the world feeling through us seems entirely natural.”[1]
What else can we do in the fight against the border infrastructure? We can feel the Earth crying, and know that we are not separate from the Earth. As John Seed, often called the father of the Australian Deep Ecology movement, said: “I try to remember that it’s not me, John Seed, trying to protect the rainforest. Rather, I am part of the rainforest protecting itself. I am that part of the rainforest that recently emerged into human thinking.”
May we resist the numbing of our hearts and minds to this merciless destruction. May bearing witness to the desecration of Earth under this administration spur us into action.
8/14 update: The original version of this article used the word “wall” and this updated version uses the term “border infrastructure” instead. The CBP’s “Smart Wall” map changes often and without announcement. While earlier versions of the map showed plans for a 30-foot wall in the Big Bend area, later versions include vehicle barriers, patrol roads, and “detection technology.” Yet, as the No Big Bend Wall Coalition wrote to CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott on 8/13, “there have been virtually no answers as to what this looks like in practice.” To adapt to the most recent map changes, some wording from the original post has been changed, but please note that the map (and plans) changes often, and the lack of transparency from CBP is concerning. The border infrastructure currently being built is destructive to the Big Bend area whether a 30-foot wall is being built or not.
[1] From page 72 of the revised edition of Active Hope.