Maybe. The AP reports that 28 miles of virtual border fence was approved by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff yesterday. The virtual fence will include 98-foot unmanned towers equipped with radar, sensor devices and cameras capable of distinguishing people from cattle at a distance of about 10 miles. (MoJo reported on the controversy over this fence from an environmental perspective in Gone. Think: endangered wildlife can’t cross a real fence either).
Kim Vacariu, of The Wildlands Project, tells me that if the virtual fence “becomes reliably functional, it would indicate that the recommendations generated through our Border Ecological Workshops, action requests to Congress, and other efforts are beginning to reach the officials who are making security infrastructure decisions—that they are seeing the importance of protecting borderland ecology from the effects of wall-building. However, it’s important to note that construction of [the virtual fence] requires road-building and associated other infrastructure that continues to degrade borderlands ecology. So we need to wait and see just how this system will work. If it does, we’re taking a step in the right direction.”
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
