- Very sad and such a tragedy.
I spent some time there on a drive across the country and it was stunning.
- Will Mexico be paying for us to destroy this national park? If not, why not?
- This is a perfect oportunity to pass public private eco laws where wind mills and solar are combined with data centers on former parks that are now designated security zones, as it is the ONLY logical solution to the complex problems of our times.
- I mean I can't have much sympathy here, it's Texas. They voted for this.
- Texas is not a monolith. The people who are decrying this action are local conservation groups and activists. These are not necessarily the same people who voted to put the current administration in power.
To simply write this off as “they deserve it” would be a mistake, and is unproductive.
- But they are the same group. Part of a democracy is that when the group decides, the group accepts the decision. Of course there can always be dissent, and no group is a monolith. But the fact is Texans voted for this. If Texans didn't want this they wouldn't have it.
- Great, I'm glad we settled this once and for all this so that I don't have to shoulder any more blame from Europeans about trump being president.
- Highly unproductive to write off the entirety of Texas like this. Have you visited Brewster or Presidio County, where this is happening, or spoken with the people who live there?
Big Bend is treasured by Texans across the political spectrum. I know nobody who is happy about this, regardless of how they vote. Environmentalists, ranchers, locals in general, strongly oppose this action by the Federal gov't.
The destruction in Big Bend is at the direction of folks who have never set foot there. It is not necessary. Just staying alive in that environment is difficult enough to deter mass migration. The existing River Road provides enough access, and probably some good vantage points (I'm not a border security expert).
- It’s a National Park doofus, we should all be angry
- The article said 10,000 people Illegally Crossed the border in this region.
Its not the VOTERS fault foreigners do not use border entry points.
We had a system of immigration that was abused by foreigners and now it has stopped.
- 1. From the article:
> During the first nine months of fiscal 2026 (October through June), authorities recorded 1,509 encounters, down from 10,291 during the same period in fiscal 2023, a decline of about 85 percent.
10k was the number recorded 3 years ago, it's been down significantly regardless of whether a wall exists or not.
2. These numbers aren't specific to Big Bend NP itself but rather to the much larger Big Bend Sector (the border contained within the park is but ~22% of these 517 miles [1]):
>The figures cover the entire Big Bend Sector, which is wider than the park itself and spans roughly 517 miles of the border.
There are no figures as to how many of the people recorded illegally crossing even used the NP part of Big Bend Sector.
Add to that the fact that the NP terrain is far more difficult to walk through than the surrounding sector and it's quite easy to see that the number of recorded illegal crossing from within the NP itself are likely to at least an order of magnitude smaller than these figures.
[1] - https://home.nps.gov/bibe/planyourvisit/border_travel.htm
- Is that an exceptional number?
- >The article said 10,000 people Illegally Crossed the border in this region.
And? Good for them on making it through. People will continue to cross the boarder because the shitty wall isn't going to stop people.
- They are building a road to get to a hard to reach area of the park. I don't think this is a reason to panic.
- "The administration is preparing to blast hundreds of miles of destructive roads through the wildest place left in Texas and cut off public access to the Rio Grande, all to enrich private contractors."
I think anyone on either side of this opinion could have made a better complaint than what they came up with. It sounds like they are upset with the idea of roads in general.
- They are; the whole idea of a national park is to have a minimum of roads so that natural splendor is preserved.
- Natural splendor includes forest fires and suffering animals. This line of thinking didn't work out so well for Australia
- > Natural splendor includes forest fires and suffering animals.
Correct
68 points by almog 13 hours ago | 27 comments