What’s at Stake
Big Bend is one of the wildest corners of the United States.
Here, the Rio Grande winds through a landscape of desert, mountains, canyons, and grasslands. Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, and surrounding public lands protect an enormous and remarkably intact portion of the Chihuahuan Desert.
It is also part of the U.S.–Mexico border.
Now, a new generation of border infrastructure is moving into this landscape.
The border barrier project includes new walls, roads, lighting, staging areas, and other infrastructure in portions of the Big Bend region.
The question isn’t whether border security is important.
The question is how we secure the border while protecting the landscapes and wildlife that make Big Bend extraordinary.
Explore the Big Bend Border Wall Map
The map below shows the proposed border infrastructure in relation to public lands, protected areas, the Rio Grande, roads, wildlife habitat, and other features of the Big Bend landscape.
A project that sounds simple on paper can look very different when you see where it sits on the ground.
```What Is Being Proposed?
Border security infrastructure is much more than a wall.
A border barrier system can include physical barriers and gates, patrol roads, access roads, lighting, surveillance equipment, drainage infrastructure, construction areas, and other supporting facilities.
In much of the Big Bend region, the international boundary follows the Rio Grande. In other areas, the border crosses remote desert and rugged mountain terrain.
That geography creates a very different construction challenge than the relatively flat landscapes found elsewhere along the southern border.
Building infrastructure in Big Bend means working through a landscape where steep mountains, narrow canyons, desert washes, sensitive soils, and the river itself can all influence where roads and structures can be placed.
The physical footprint of a project can therefore extend beyond the barrier itself.
Roads are needed to reach it.
Construction requires staging areas and access.
Infrastructure requires maintenance.
And in an arid environment, disturbance to soil and vegetation can persist long after construction crews have left.
Why Big Bend Matters
Big Bend is more than a scenic stretch of desert.
It is one of the largest protected landscapes in Texas and one of the most ecologically intact portions of the Chihuahuan Desert in the United States.
Big Bend National Park protects more than 800,000 acres along the Rio Grande. Nearby, Big Bend Ranch State Park protects hundreds of thousands more acres of desert, mountains, canyons, and river corridor.
Together with other public and private conservation lands, these areas form a connected landscape that supports wildlife and protects important habitat.
That connectivity is one of the things that makes Big Bend special.
You can travel for hours through the region without encountering a major road or development.
In many places, the landscape still feels much as it would have before modern infrastructure arrived.
That doesn’t mean Big Bend should be completely untouched.
It does mean that decisions about new infrastructure deserve to account for the landscape as a whole.
The Rio Grande Is More Than a Border
The Rio Grande is the defining geographic feature of Big Bend.
It is also an ecological corridor.
In the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert, the river provides water and supports riparian vegetation that is dramatically different from the surrounding desert. Cottonwoods, willows, shrubs, and other vegetation create habitat for birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and countless other species.
For people, the river is equally important.
It is the backdrop to some of the most iconic experiences in Big Bend—from paddling through Santa Elena Canyon to hiking along the river and looking across the water into Mexico.
The river also demonstrates why the border is not simply a line on a map.
Water moves across boundaries.
Wildlife moves across boundaries.
Fire, vegetation, sediment, and ecological processes move across boundaries.
The landscape does not stop at the international boundary.
Wildlife Doesn’t Recognize the Border
Big Bend supports an extraordinary variety of wildlife, including black bears, mountain lions, bobcats, javelina, mule deer, bats, birds, reptiles, and many other species.
Some animals regularly move across the Rio Grande. Others depend on the larger landscape for seasonal movements between food, water, shelter, and breeding habitat.
A continuous barrier can change those movements.
The ecological effects depend heavily on the species and the design and location of the infrastructure. A barrier that presents little challenge to a bird can be a significant obstacle for a ground-dwelling animal.
For species that cannot cross a wall or fence, even a relatively narrow infrastructure corridor can contribute to habitat fragmentation.
That makes placement important.
A barrier located in one part of a landscape may have very different consequences from the same barrier located somewhere else.
A Landscape That Requires Planning
This is where the Big Bend border wall becomes more than a debate about a physical structure.
It becomes a question about how we make decisions on complicated landscapes.
Big Bend contains national parkland, state parkland, wilderness, wildlife habitat, private property, the Rio Grande, cultural resources, recreation areas, and other conservation values.
Those interests don’t always point in the same direction.
Good planning is supposed to help identify those conflicts before construction begins.
Environmental review is one of the tools federal agencies use to evaluate potential impacts and consider alternatives and mitigation.
That process can examine issues such as:
- Wildlife and threatened or endangered species
- Habitat connectivity
- Water resources and drainage
- Cultural and historic resources
- Soil and vegetation disturbance
- Wilderness and protected lands
- Recreation and visitor experiences
- Scenic resources
- Construction and long-term maintenance impacts
- Cumulative effects
These questions are particularly important in remote landscapes where a new road or structure can introduce impacts far beyond the immediate construction footprint.
What About Environmental Waivers?
One of the most important parts of the recent border infrastructure debate is the federal government’s ability to waive certain laws and requirements to expedite construction.
The REAL ID Act of 2005 gives the Department of Homeland Security authority to waive certain legal requirements when necessary to ensure the expeditious construction of border barriers.
Those authorities have been used during previous border barrier projects and have played an important role in recent construction along the southern border.
The issue matters in Big Bend because environmental review is intended to help agencies understand the consequences of projects before they are built.
When environmental laws or review requirements are waived, some of the normal opportunities to study alternatives, identify impacts, seek public input, and require mitigation can be reduced or eliminated.
A waiver does not make environmental impacts disappear.
It changes the process used to identify and address them.
That distinction matters.
Border Security and Conservation Are Not Mutually Exclusive
There is a legitimate need for border security.
There is also a legitimate interest in protecting America’s public lands.
Those two ideas don’t have to be opposites.
The challenge is finding solutions that recognize both.
Big Bend is not an empty strip of land waiting for infrastructure. It is a functioning ecosystem, a national park, a state park, wildlife habitat, a river corridor, a recreational destination, and a landscape that generations of Americans have worked to conserve.
That doesn’t mean border infrastructure can never be built here.
It means where and how it is built matters.
A carefully planned project can look very different from one designed primarily around speed and convenience.
Why We Built This Map
We created the Public Land Threats Map because public land issues are often difficult to understand from a headline alone.
“Border wall” sounds straightforward.
Put that wall on a map, however, and the complexity becomes visible.
You can see the Rio Grande.
The mountains.
The national park.
The state park.
The roads.
The wildlife habitat.
The protected lands.
And the places where all of these features overlap.
That’s what we want the map to do.
We’re not trying to replace the underlying science, planning documents, or government records.
We’re trying to make them easier to understand in the context of the landscape.
Location matters.
What Happens Next?
The Big Bend border infrastructure project is an evolving issue.
Project locations, designs, construction schedules, federal policies, and environmental requirements can change over time.
That makes it important to look beyond a single announcement or headline and follow the underlying project documents as they develop.
We will continue updating this map as new information becomes available.
If you care about Big Bend, there are also simple ways to stay engaged:
- Follow updates from the agencies managing the affected lands.
- Read the underlying project and planning documents.
- Learn about the landscapes and wildlife that could be affected.
- Pay attention to opportunities for public comment and public participation.
- Support organizations working to understand and protect the Big Bend region.
Public lands are difficult to restore once infrastructure has been built.
Planning matters.
The Bigger Question
The debate over border infrastructure is often framed as a choice between security and conservation.
We don’t think it has to be.
America can secure its borders while also protecting the extraordinary public lands that happen to sit along them.
But doing both requires recognizing that landscapes are complicated.
The Rio Grande doesn’t care where the boundary is drawn.
Wildlife doesn’t recognize an international border.
Water doesn’t follow political lines.
And ecosystems don’t come with convenient construction corridors.
Big Bend has been shaped by natural processes for thousands of years.
We should be thoughtful about what we choose to build into it.
Border security matters. So do the public lands that make up the border. The challenge is finding a way to protect both.
Sources & Further Reading
The Public Land Threats Map is an independent project built from publicly available government documents, agency data, scientific research, planning documents, and other sources.
Because border infrastructure projects can change quickly, we recommend consulting the original agency documents for the most current information.
Federal Agencies
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security
- National Park Service — Big Bend National Park
- Texas Parks and Wildlife Department — Big Bend Ranch State Park
- Bureau of Land Management
Additional Research
Additional scientific research, federal documents, project-specific records, and primary sources will be added here as the project develops.
About This Project
The Public Land Threats Map is an independent project created by Public Land Lovers.
We are travelers, scientists, geographers, and public land enthusiasts who believe that understanding a landscape is one of the best ways to appreciate it.
We built this map to make complicated public land issues easier to see, explore, and understand.
If you find an important source, project, or piece of information that we missed, we’d love to hear from you.