Write a new simple attractive title based on the title from Opposing Trump’s border wall with help from Texas wildlife [Opinion] and dont use quote marks

Much has been written about the beauty and biodiversity of the borderlands, especially the Rio Grande Valley, as the Trump administration moves to bulldoze through it to build new border walls.

But resistance to the walls isn’t just coming from activists and communities in the path of construction. Many of the best arguments against Trump’s destructive project actually come from his own federal experts and Texas officials.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service describes the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge as “one of the most biodiverse regions in North America” and offers a 16-page tally of the hundreds of birds spotted there.

The agency also provides a list of imperiled species, like the ocelot and Texas ayenia, which need wild places along the Rio Grande to survive. According to federal planning documents, thousands of acres of this wildlife habitat will be lost to Trump’s wall.

Texas is rightly proud of its Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park, an international bird-watching destination.

“Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park alone has an impressive list of 358 species recorded within the park’s boundaries,” boasts the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “Some birders travel to the Bentsen to see bird species they can’t find anyplace else in the country, from the Green Jay and the Buff-bellied Hummingbird to the Great Kiskadee and the Altamira Oriole.”

But most of the park would end up on the south side of the proposed wall. If that happens, state officials warned last year, the 766-acre park might have to forfeit the land and close its doors to the public. That would mean giving up the 30,000-plus visitors it brings to the region each year.

It could end the park’s role as a teaching center for generations of children and wall off one of the last places in the region where families can camp by the banks of the Rio Grande.

“The barriers to park use would weaken the ability of Bentsen-Rio Grande to perform one of its primary missions, providing access to the outdoors for local scout groups and serving as an outdoor classroom for school groups,” parks officials wrote.

Planned border walls will also cut through the National Butterfly Center and the grounds of historic La Lomita Chapel. The Trump administration will even seize land from hundreds of private properties and family farms.

Trump recently waived 28 environmental and public health laws in the Rio Grande Valley’s Hidalgo and Cameron counties to rush wall construction. The Center for Biological Diversity, where I work, sued to challenge Trump’s reckless attempt to ignore these protections for clean air, clean water and endangered wildlife.

Our case notes that Congress did not intend to give the Trump administration, or any administration, unlimited power to build border walls wherever it wants, without following federal laws.

Texas wildlife officials certainly understand the damage these walls can do in the Rio Grande Valley, which already has 54 miles of border barriers. They’ve seen it before.

In 2009, less than a year after new walls were built, the Rio Grande flooded, as it often does. Fleeing animals were trapped by a concrete border wall, unable to escape the rising floodwaters.

After the flood, wildlife officials found hundreds of waterlogged shells from the Texas tortoise — a state-listed threatened species — pushed up against the wall, full of muck and rot. The agency expected the same fate for other animals, saying any ocelots or jaguarundis would have likely perished in the floodwaters.

The bottom line: This is no place for border walls, and not only because they don’t stop people from crossing. This is some of the most biodiverse, breathtaking country in North America, where people and animals have lived for millennia.

With so few wild places left, we have to protect these last havens for wildlife and outdoor recreation in the Rio Grande Valley. Texans shouldn’t let Trump’s wall smash these natural treasures.