Yesterday I went out to the headwaters of the Yaqui River, to the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Arizona to check on border wall construction & wildlife corridors & jaguar critical habitat. I was shocked to see the entire valley is almost walled off. /1

The wall is heading straight for Guadalupe Canyon seen here. This canyon connects the Peloncillos in Arizona to the Sierra Pan Duro and San Luis in northern Mexico which make a straight line to the northern most breeding population further south in Sonora, Mexico. /2

There was so much activity. During the national emergency that is Covid-19 work crews seem to have doubled in size since I last was out there. There so much activity: cranes placing wall, crews welding, cement trucks, water trucks, earth movers raising walls of dust. /3

The project is massive and has its own cement facility. /4

The project requires millions of gallons of water to make the concrete footers for the wall. All of that water is pumped from wells on site, at the edge of a National Wildlife Refuge that houses several endangered fish, frogs & spring snails. /5

There are so many work crews on site. License plates of parked trucks show contractors are nearly all from out of state. They go back to hotels in the small border town of Douglas, potentially bringing Covid-19 with them. 6/

Face masks are not a part of the PPE. 7/

Here you can see they are clearing the way to take the wall up and over a small mountain leading out of the valley. 8/