Instead of a Border Wall, CBP Plans to Pave Backcountry Roads Along Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park
Massive bipartisan blowback cancels national park border wall (for now), but grave concerns about destructive and intrusive infrastructure remain
After severe and sustained bipartisan blowback—including from all Big Bend border sheriffs, all Texas border county judges, and countless furious locals—it appears that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has stepped away from its plans to build a 30-foot-high border wall through Big Bend National Park.
In a May 4 article in the Washington Examiner, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, who’s the administration’s top border official, said that “Big Bend National Park has some just, like, unbelievably huge granite cliffs. It would be kind of silly to put like a 30-foot border wall on top of a 90-foot granite cliff.”
“So what we’re trying to convey is that we are going to have meaningful border security in that entire area,” he said.
(Quick fact check: Big Bend National Park doesn’t have any granite rock formations. It’s all sedimentary or volcanic rock.)
According to Scott, instead of building a physical wall, CBP now plans to pave roads along the border in the national park—meaning: the Rio Grande—and use more detection technology, which may include drones, cameras, radars, and fiber-optic cables. That technology could also include lighting infrastructure.
While this statement that there won’t be a physical steel bollard wall along the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park is, of course, a positive and welcome development, many questions still remain unanswered.
Before CBP deleted its so-called “Smart Wall Map” from its own Smart Wall Map webpage on April 23, the map’s latest version showed a brand new road that closely paralleled the Rio Grande.
That map is now gone, but this is what its last publicly visible version looked like:
“Is this the road CBP intends to pave?” wondered former Big Bend National Park Superintendent Bob Krumenaker, who’s now the chairman of Keep Big Bend Wild, an organization advocating for official wilderness designations in the national park, while also working to stop the construction of destructive infrastructure.
“Or would it be the existing River Road, just a few miles north? How many desert washes will need bridges or hardened crossings, at what impact and what cost?”
Krumenaker also pointed out several other unknowns. “Does CBP intend to install fiber optic cable(s) along either of these roads, or along existing paved roads in the park?” he asked. Are they planning on installing any lighting features along these roads? Do their plans still include vehicle barriers in the national park, which were shown on the map before it got removed?
If CBP doesn’t construct any brand new roads along the Rio Grande, their only option for paved roads paralleling the border would be paving existing backcountry dirt roads. Specifically, it would mean paving the 51-mile River Road, which is regarded as one of the best 4WD trips in the entire state of Texas.
On the official national park map below, I highlighted in purple where, in the case of using existing roads, the new paved roads would be.
I don’t really have to point this out, but that would involve a lot of construction in the most remote part of the park. It would bring heavy equipment, hundreds of crewmembers, debris, tons of noise, and potential runoff of pollution into the Rio Grande.
“Does the DHS Secretary intend to waive the 28 federal laws for the area that includes Big Bend National Park, that otherwise require environmental and cultural compliance and public involvement prior to any significant federal action in the national park?” former superintendent Krumenaker asked.
As all of the above remains unclear, locals in the Big Bend National Park area remain on high alert.
Krumenaker, who’s personally worked with Border Patrol during his tenure in the national park, said that until a few years ago, Border Patrol provided annual funding to the National Park Service (NPS) to maintain the River Road, which connects Castolon in the west to Hot Springs in the east.
The agreement between both parties was that the road surface would remain unpaved and suitable for 25mph travel by high-clearance 4WD vehicles.
While CBP agents, along with their law enforcement colleagues from the NPS, still patrol those roads on a regular basis, Border Patrol hasn’t funded that agreement for years and now, the “River Road is currently in a very poor, unmaintained condition,” the park’s website says.
The most common-sense solution here, which would also save multi-millions of taxpayer dollars, would simply be for CBP to use its funds to honor that previous agreement with the NPS, and restore the River Road to acceptable standards.
A properly maintained dirt road paralleling the Rio Grande would be all that’s needed to keep this remote section of the southern border secure, while preserving the park’s extraordinary wilderness character.
Combined with wireless surveillance technology, which already exists and works within the national park, literally nothing else is required for border security here.
As I’ve said before in several of my previous articles about the Big Bend border wall saga, the park doesn’t need any physical barriers or even new paved roads at all. Thanks to its exceptional remoteness, rugged mountains, and sheer canyon cliffs, it is the least active of all nine southern border sections—by far.
The entire 517-mile Bend Sector forms 26% of the 1,952-mile U.S.-Mexico border but only accounts for 6% of the migrant activity. Big Bend National Park encompasses 118 miles of that border, but sees even fewer illegal crossings—and not a single vehicle crosses the Rio Grande illegally in the park.
Credit where credit is due: although many things remain unclear and unsolved, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott does deserve appreciation for taking into account the huge bipartisan pushback against a physical wall in the national park.
That pushback was centered on the many negative effects a wall would have on the park’s integrity and character. It was about how it would destroy bird habitat, wildlife migration routes, the local economy and especially river outfitters, and the park’s wilderness experience.
Here’s where I have to emphasize that a road would affect many of those things as well.
A paved road paralleling the Rio Grande between Castolon and Hot Springs would turn this huge area from remote backcountry into easily accessible frontcountry. The entire park experience—a large part of which is its remoteness, wildness, and impeccable night sky—would become different.
“The area includes nationally and internationally significant public lands, ranchlands, tourism-based economies, and critical wildlife habitat,” a bipartisan coalition of all five border sheriffs in the Big Bend region said in a joint statement on March 9. “Major permanent infrastructure, accompanied by lighting systems, access roads, and maintenance corridors would permanently alter one of the most remote and ecologically significant border landscapes in the United States.”
Paving these rugged backcountry dirt roads, Krumenaker agreed, “would require massive infrastructure installation and significant terrain modification to cross dozens of desert washes subject to flash flooding, and it would be vulnerable to damage in future flash floods.”
“It would likely be a significant visual intrusion and almost certainly cause massive negative impacts to the natural and cultural resources of one of America’s Crown Jewel places.”
This is all to say that, yes, the physical border wall plans may have been shelved due to bipartisan blowback, but paved roads and their associated infrastructure aren’t necessarily a whole lot better.
In fact, it’s important to know that Big Bend National Park—despite its famed ruggedness, wildness, and remoteness—isn’t nearly as well protected as you might assume.
Not a single acre in the park is currently protected as official wilderness. In theory and while following applicable laws, that means that infrastructure could, in fact, be built all throughout the park.
“In 1978 the National Park Service completed a multi-year Big Bend wilderness study which resulted in a recommendation to Congress that 538,250 acres of the park be designated as wilderness and 44,750 acres be identified as potential wilderness. Congress has yet to act on the recommendation, and only Congress can make those protections permanent,” says the park on its website.
“Today, more than 80% of Big Bend National Park is recommended, potential, or eligible for wilderness designation.” None of it, however, is actually protected as wilderness.
“Since 1964, every president has signed laws creating new wilderness areas. National parks such as Death Valley, Everglades, Yosemite, and even Guadalupe Mountains here in Texas have substantial acreage protected as federal wilderness. Why not Big Bend?” the park itself asks on its website.
And that’s exactly what former Big Bend National Park Superintendent Bob Krumenaker’s Keep Big Bend Wild is striving to get accomplished: preventing a wall and other intrusive infrastructure from being built and petitioning Congress to pass a bill that permanently protects the currently undeveloped areas in the park as designated wilderness.
And this is a message that I stand firmly behind. I wholeheartedly believe that designating more wilderness areas is the most important action to safeguard the future of America’s public lands and waters.
It is the strongest form of legal protection any landscape can get in the United States and the potential—especially with a future, open-minded, and willing Congress—is absolutely enormous.
Lastly, I must point out that this new development involves only Big Bend National Park. There are currently no reliable updates concerning the adjacent Big Bend Ranch State Park or private lands in the area, which may still see a border wall being erected.
So, What Can You Do?
If you care about the national and state parks and the greater Big Bend area, please keep the pressure on. Keep supporting the local organizations who are pushing back against this unpopular wall and other destructive infrastructure:
Follow them on social media and share their posts. Check out their advocacy resources. Support them with a donation if you can.
If you live in Texas yourself, contact your Senators and Representative. That includes both national and state politicians, even Governor Greg Abbott himself:
You can also use this super-easy 5calls.org script.
Another meaningful way to push back against the Big Bend border infrastructure, regardless of whether you live in Texas or elsewhere in the country, is adding your signature to this rapidly growing petition, which, at the time of writing, has amassed over 130,000 signatures.
Lastly, help spread the word. Share this article. Tell your friends, family, and neighbors about it. Post about protecting the Big Bend area’s unique character on social media.
Thanks for speaking up for our public lands and waters!
See you out there,
Bram
Image 1: National Park Service
Image 2: Customs and Border Protection
Image 3: National Park Service
Image 4: National Park Service