Real Life in the Borderlands

Warner Glenn started the Malpai Borderlands Group twenty five years ago to bring together his fellow ranchers and land owners in Southern Arizona and the Bootheel of New Mexico and to improve communications with the various government agencies where relations were historically tense or completely broken.

Through Chris Van Dyke’s contacts in the outdoor and conservation worlds, we were  invited to meet this group at their annual meeting that was held at the Malpai Ranch outside Douglas, Arizona that has been in the Glenn family for six generations. This meeting was a role mode for the kind of civic engagement that ought to be happening all across America but appears sadly lacking – the Glenns and their neighbors in two states, representatives from state government, BLM, National Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, and other interested conservation groups all discussing issues of mutual interest with respect and constructive intent.

The Customs and Border Patrol chief from the Douglas area gave an update. We learned that apprehensions were few in this area (migrants and drug movements at an all time low) but that they were dealing with an overflow from El Paso where asylum-seeking families are turning themselves in to authorities in groups of several hundred at a time. The local CBP team in this area has been reduced from 600 to 400 as a result but they do have additional technology and people from military deployments to the border – the National Guard are not very useful but the regular army Military Police are appreciated. We also heard that they had entered into the planning stages for a 30 foot wall across this area and into New Mexico but the national focus was on Texas where the process could get bogged down in a huge humber of complex land ownership issues and lawsuits. Maybe the wall won’t happen here for years.

Maybe.

After the meeting, Kelly Kimbro, Warner’s daughter, took us for a short tour of the ranch where they keep a few hundred head of cattle and hunt mountain lions. While she took care of the well pump we had a wide-ranging frank discussion on the issues of the day. Kelly has welcomed politicians of all persuasions and is not shy in expressing her views. We asked Kelly and others at the meeting if they thought a wall was a solution to any problems on the border and they all responded with a resounding NO – “I don’t care what you build, people are still going to come through” and  “anyone with the border as their property line wants a vehicle barrier and technology to help Border Patrol to do their job”. “Boy, I’d love to get Donald Trump into this truck to talk to him”.

A lot of people around here have put millions of dollars and decades of work into conservation with partners on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the border. The Sky Islands country is one of the most diverse habitats in America; a series of high valleys and mountains between the Rockies and the Sierra Madre where people have been limiting development to preserve its uniqueness. A wall through here would ruin all their efforts. An ecological disaster in the making.

Everyone we met today was extraordinarily generous with their time and willingness to answer questions and engage a group of strangers who showed up on motorcycles.

This is America how it should be.

Photos: Warner Glenn and his daughter Kelly Kimbro – driving across the ranch to manage the well pump and cattle trough – family museum with equipment and artifacts from generations of life on the ranch