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Continental Divide

Continental Divide

Wildlife, People, and the Border Wall

by Krista Schlyer

Foreword by Jamie Rappaport Clark

Published by: Texas A&M University Press

Imprint: Texas A&M University Press

192 Pages, 234.00 × 261.00 × 28.00 mm, 173 color photos. Map. Bib. Index.

Paperback
9781603447430
Published: October 2012

£22.99

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Description
Praise

The topic of the border wall between the United States and Mexico continues to be broadly and hotly debated: on national news media, by local and state governments, and even in coffee shops and over the dinner table. By now, broad segments of the population have heard widely varying opinions about the wall’s effect on illegal immigration, international politics, and the drug war.

But what about the wall’s effect on the Sonoran pronghorn antelope herds and the kit fox? On the Mexican gray wolf, the ocelot, the jaguar, and the bighorn sheep? In unforgettable images and evocative text, Continental Divide: Wildlife, People, and the Border Wall helps readers understand all that is at stake.

As Krista Schlyer explains, the remoteness of this region from most US citizens’ lives, coupled with the news media’s focus on illegal immigration and drug violence, has left many with an incomplete picture. As she reminds us, this largely isolated natural area, stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, hosts a number of rare ecosystems: Arizona’s last free-flowing river, the San Pedro; the grasslands of New Mexico, some of the last undeveloped prairies on the continent; the single most diverse birding area in the US, located along the lower Rio Grande River in Texas; and habitat and migration corridors for some of both nations’ most imperiled species.?In documenting the changes to the ecosystems and human communities along the border while the wall was being built, Schlyer realized that the impacts of immigration policy on wildlife, on landowners, and on border towns were not fully understood by either policy makers or the general public. The wall not only has disrupted the ancestral routes of wildlife; it has also rerouted human traffic through the most pristine and sensitive of wildlands, causing additional destruction, conflict, and death—without solving the original problem.

"Krista Schlyer has lived the border problems. Hers is a narrative balanced with words and images. She's tasted the arid land's flavors and distilled the essential truth: that it's madness to drive a wedge through our own heart in a misguided effort to keep our nation safe."--Jack Dykinga, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer

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" . . .offers a taste of geology and biology and history. We feel the searing temperatures of the desert.. Above all, Schlyer examines the human hands that have shaped these landscapes, sometimes sustaining them but too often bringing destruction, even death, to man and beast.."--Lynn Scarlett, former deputy secretary, US Department of the Interior

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“In these embattled times, every corner of the planet needs defenders. With Continental Divide, Krista Schlyer, wielding pen and camera with equal grace, takes her place as one of the staunchest advocates of the battered, contested, and sublimely beautiful territory we know as the US-Mexico borderlands.”--William deBuys, author, A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest

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"There is a visual song of peace and reason in Continental Divide. Border security hysteria has drowned out such music in recent years, with much of the hate speech and hawkishness coming from those who've never stepped foot here. Schlyer's voice and camera bring the reality of the borderlands to Continental Divide, and present it to the reader as it is."--Daniel Mills, Borderlands Campaign Organizer, Sierra Club

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"Krista Schlyer’s magnificent book Continental Divide: Wildlife, People, and the Border Wall, reveals much truth about a part of the United States that is little known and largely misunderstood. Refuting the popular image of the border as a sterile desert area, her book reveals that the borderlands hold almost unimaginable richness of life and beauty in both human and natural communities. She goes on to outline the almost overwhelming odds against preserving that beauty and interconnectedness in the face of both political and physical barriers. This is the only book that addresses both the human and ecological world that is being torn apart by the failure of both the United States and Mexico to deal with their internal problems related to immigration, drugs and guns. For those of you who don’t know the borderlands, you owe it to yourself to read this and learn. For those you who do, you will both smile and weep at the stunning pictures and poignant text."--Dinah Bear, attorney, border issues, Defenders of Wildlife and Humane Borders and also authored an amicus brief supporting a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the waiver of laws for construction of the border wall and roads."--Dinah Bear, Attorney, Tucson, Arizona