Two conservation groups, Sky Island Alliance and Wildlands Network, announced Monday an expansion of their work to research wildlife in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

In June 2022, the groups established an array of remote cameras along two miles of the border wall within southeast Arizona’s San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge. The project will study the border wall’s effects on wildlife movement and other impacts on wildlife The San Bernardino Valley has long been an important migration corridor between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madre Occidental. However, the installation of 30-foot-tall border wall in December 2020 potentially severed this corridor.

The barrier is nearly impermeable to large mammals except during certain months, from June to September, when a series of 1.7-meter-wide flood gates are open to allow monsoonal floods to flow through large drainages. This study aims to assess whether large mammals can and will cross between Mexico and the U.S. through the open flood gates in the border wall.

“Because all laws were waived for the rapid construction of the border wall, no environmental reviews were conducted to study its impact on wildlife at the refuge,” said Michael Dax, Western Program Director for Wildlands Network. “Now, with this vital research underway, we can begin to understand how the border wall affects animal populations.”