Army Corps of Engineers, which is coordinating border wall building with the Border Patrol. Road widening is scheduled to begin soon, including a “relocation plan” for saguaros and other cactuses, Andrew Kornacki, a spokesman for the U.S. Fisher has a $268-million contract to build about 31 miles of border fence in the area. could be seen skirting saguaros as they widened the main east-west dirt road, Devil’s Highway. To the west in Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, crews from Tempe, Ariz.-based Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. The cactuses could soon be threatened elsewhere. On Wednesday, Dyman, the Border Patrol spokesman, declined to comment about the two cactuses. Nonetheless, the next day, workers had widened the road, uprooted, chopped and discarded the two saguaros under other brush. In the path of the access road widening stood two saguaros - each more than 30 feet tall with an arm, suggesting that they were at least 95 years old.
18, it was not clear which saguaros at Organ Pipe had been marked for destruction.
“Every time I visit I see hundreds of butchered cacti,” he said.ĭuring a visit on Feb. “If they find something, work stops,” the video says. On Tuesday, Villeareal tweeted a video of the construction site and insisted that the Border Patrol has “environmental and cultural monitors” on site. Less than 10% of cactuses in the border wall construction zone at Organ Pipe have been removed so far, he said, and healthy plants have been transplanted elsewhere in the park.