Border Patrol maps show the planned border wall cutting through the center’s land.
The US government shutdown may not have secured funding for the border wall president Trump wanted, but last year’s budget did include $1.6 billion for the construction of 33 miles-worth of barrier, a section of which is about to be erected in Texas. And that section is slated to go right through the refuge lands of the National Butterfly Center.
Federal officials say they plan to start construction of the wall on federally-owned land nearby, but US Customs and Border Protection maps reviewed by the Associated Press show that the planned wall would “cut through the butterfly center, a nearby state park, and a century-old Catholic chapel next to the river,” the AP writes.
One hydraulic excavator has already been “pre-positioned” on land “owned by the US Fish and Wildlife Service,” a US Customs and Border Protection official wrote in an email to Quartz on Wednesday (Feb. 6). Construction will begin there in “mid-February,” the official wrote.
The Republicans seem to care nothing about nature in general. They worship money, not the earth or anything on it, except what can make them more money.