S4E40: The Battle for the San Rafael Valley

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0:00:00 - (Chris Clarke): 90 miles from the desert Protection Podcast is made possible by listeners just like you. If you want to help us out, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate or text needles to 53555.

0:00:25 - (Joe Geoffrey): Think the deserts are barren wastelands? Think again. It's time for 90 miles from Needles the Desert Protection Podcast.

0:00:46 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you Joe and welcome to 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. I'm your host Chris Clarke and we skipped a week last week. I didn't really plan to do that. The Quick Take we had a veterinary emergency come up which preoccupied us for a few days. It looks like it might be slow progression towards end of life for my beloved dog Heart, who I've had for 11 years.

0:01:13 - (Chris Clarke): We found out that she has a case of hip dysplasia, which she's had her entire life because that's how that works. But she is such a tough girl that she did not show any discomfort from this at all until about two weeks ago. And last week we got her X rayed, got the diagnosis. She's currently in a significant amount of pain and we're managing that as best we can with the vet's advice. We may have to make a really difficult decision sometime way sooner than I want to.

0:01:42 - (Chris Clarke): I hope that's not the case. I hope we can get the pain under control, but we are not going to let her suffer. So at any rate, TMI, I understand, but that was preoccupying me last week and I didn't get an episode put together. But we've got a good one for you here, which I will launch by asking you a quick trivia question. You're most likely familiar with the 1955 movie Oklahoma by Rodgers and Hammerstein, based on their 1946 stage musical, where was that movie filmed?

0:02:15 - (Chris Clarke): The answer is in this episode we have a really wonderful interview with Andrea Hoerr, who works with Save the Scenic Santa Ritas as well as with Great Old Broads for Wilderness in Tucson, and she, along with some fellow activists, are putting together an event on November 15th down in the San Rafael Valley, there's the answer to your trivia question. The San Rafael Valley is being faced with new border wall construction. It's a biodiversity hotspot, and the border wall and the construction of it are going to change that for the worse.

0:02:44 - (Chris Clarke): I think you're really going to appreciate this interview with Andrea. But first, this is where we usually mention people that have become new donors since the last episode. And we have one. And that donor is Andrea Hoerr. And just so you know, I decided to invite her to come on the podcast before I learned about the donation. She's a fan of the podcast so it makes sense we would have amplified Andrea's good work even without the donation.

0:03:09 - (Chris Clarke): But we're grateful for it and thank you Andrea. If you want to be as cool as Andrea, you can do that by going to 90 miles from needles.com donate and we will appreciate the heck out of you for doing it. To start the episode, we're also going to enjoy some work by our friend Fred Bell, the nature recordist who brings us this evening on the Amargosa River. Let's listen. San Rafael Valley is a beautiful grassland in Southern Arizona right on the border that has been the subject of a lot of attention from conservationists and border activists of late because of plans to put another section of the abysmal border wall across it. I am very pleased to have Andrea Hoerr in our virtual studio and she's going to be telling us about what's going on down there and about plans for a really interesting sounding event on the 15th of November.

0:05:23 - (Chris Clarke): Andrea, thank you for joining us here at 90 Miles from Needles.

0:05:27 - (Andrea Hoerr): Yeah, awesome. Chris, I'm so thrilled to be able to talk with you today. I'm love your podcast and you're really doing important and vital work. So thank you for everything you're doing well.

0:05:37 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you so much.

0:05:38 - (Andrea Hoerr): Yeah, yeah. So a little bit about me. My name is Andrea Hoerr, but you can call me Dre and I live in Tucson. I am an Arizona Massacre Naturalist. I'm on the board of Safest Scenic Santa Ritas. We are fighting against a huge copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains and that could be a topic for another episode. Yes, just seeding the thought there. And I'm also the volunteer co leader of the Tucson Great Old Broads for Wilderness.

0:06:05 - (Andrea Hoerr): If you haven't heard about the Broads, we're a woman-led national grassroots organization with chapters or as we call them, broadbands across the United states. In over 40 locations, the Broads engage and inspire activism to preserve and protect wilderness and wild lands. And it's a fantastic group. So check out greatoldbroads.org if you'd like to know more.

0:06:27 - (Chris Clarke): Wonderful. I've long been an admirer of Great Old Broads for Wilderness and just really wish more people knew about them. I mean you guys seem not to get as much publicity as like Sierra Club or CBD or places like that, but you're doing pretty amazing work and so I'm just really glad to add Great old Broads for Wilderness to the list of groups that we've helped promote.

0:06:52 - (Andrea Hoerr): You know, it's funny in saying that we don't have the national spotlight as much and I've actually heard it's referred to as a micro green instead of a big green and I kind of like that really. What I want to talk about today and why you invited me on today is the large coalition of people that are opposed to the new 27-mile section at the border wall. As you mentioned, it is in the San Rafael Valley and I've been engaged with fighting various incarnations of this wall for years.

0:07:23 - (Andrea Hoerr): We started out by being able to successfully present prevent the ill-conceived container wall installation three years ago. And I started a website for the resistance at that time. We have updated the website recently and it now reflects the current state of the wall. We've got this wonderful designer. She's a professor at University of Michigan. Her name is Kate Ostrom and she's created a big, visually beautiful experience with tons and tons of great information.

0:07:53 - (Andrea Hoerr): Biodiversity is what it's all about in this region and connectivity. And she's doing a fantastic job highlighting the issues. So if you want to check that out, it's borderwallresistance.com and there's tons of great information out there.

0:08:09 - (Chris Clarke): Excellent. And we will have that in our show notes in case you listeners are afraid you're going to forget. Tell us a little bit about the San Rafael Valley. Like where is it precisely? If you were going to leave from downtown Tucson and hop on the 10, where would you go next?

0:08:24 - (Andrea Hoerr): Yeah, so the best way to get there, It's a challenge. It is very remote. The roads are not the best to get there. Probably the easiest way to get there from Tucson is to go down to Sierra Vista and then you go through the Coronado National Forest to Montezuma Pass. And that's a good road. Getting up to the pass as it’s marker 102 with the border wall. The Arizona National Scenic Trail starts there. And then you start going down mountain on really, really bad roads.

0:08:57 - (Andrea Hoerr): Dirt; not well maintained. And it's about 12 miles down that road to the current staging area. If you think about this part of the country, it's exceedingly remote, exceedingly mountainous and they're trying to put a straight line through terrain that is not a straight line. So they're blasting the mountains, creating switchbacks, really tight switchbacks, and then they're carting all that debris down that horrible road to be used for the concrete to make the foundation for the wall. It's an enormous amount of human effort and the scale and scope is absolutely staggering.

0:09:39 - (Chris Clarke): What is the valley like without the wall there, without the construction? What's the status quo ante?

0:09:45 - (Andrea Hoerr): Yeah, it's a beautiful grasslands. It's got oaks, it's got junipers, it's got tons of birds and insects. I think one of the highest bee biodiversity spots in the entire world. It's on the migration or monarch butterflies, which, you know, they, they don't go all that high, you know, so it's, it's choking off mammals. We've got jaguar sightings from wildlife cameras right there, right in that area. Black bear, javelina, pronghorn.

0:10:20 - (Andrea Hoerr): All the big mammals use this beautiful, connected grasslands to go from Arizona down to Samora, Mexico and back. They're looking for water, they're looking for mates, they're looking for room to roam and we're choking that off.

0:10:37 - (Chris Clarke): What would be the impact on the biodiversity if this wall is completed?

0:10:43 - (Andrea Hoerr): Well, you're cutting off the migration corridors for all these large mammals, large and small mammals. You know, the slats are not that wide so the connectivity is impacted. You've got insects, you've got birds that are going to be impacted. Because it's not just the wall, it's all the infrastructure that supports the wall. It's the lights, it's the noise, it's the constant. And in fact there was a report recently that indicated that animals are actually avoiding the border.

0:11:14 - (Andrea Hoerr): Where are they going to go? They're going to go into more populated areas. We're going to see increased vehicle collisions, increased conflict with humans. Why are we again forcing this wonderful part of our environment into our more highly populated areas when they have road to roam without impacting each other?

0:11:37 - (Chris Clarke): Right. How had the San Rafael Valley escaped the border wall construction until now? Is it just a function of the remoteness?

0:11:44 - (Andrea Hoerr): Yeah, the remoteness is a big part of the picture and a big part of why that was not targeted originally. The first incarnations of the wall, it is very difficult to get to. There are no close by cities, no ports of entry, and the numbers of people who have crossed that area illegally are vanishingly small. And keep in mind the border itself is highly militarized. It's highly scrutinized, surveilled, there's drones, there's balloons, there's cameras everywhere.

0:12:18 - (Andrea Hoerr): And honestly, the number of people that have managed to make this very difficult trek does not warrant the scope of this ecocide.

0:12:29 - (Chris Clarke): So this is the area where the shipping container wall was, if I'm not mistaken.

0:12:34 - (Andrea Hoerr): That's right, yeah. Yeah, so that was a gambit by our former governor, Doug Ducey. It was state led and contracted and they, they tried to install this container wall on federal land. The federal government did nothing to stop it. They stacked containers too high and covered them with razor wire. And our band of activists were able to work with attorneys and everybody else to not only bring awareness and do peaceful protests, but then the courts went out and they had to remove the container walls, create mitigation and restoration plans, and start working on that. Only for now, three years later, all of that good work to have been undone.

0:13:24 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah, we had Melissa Del Bosque from the Border Chronicle on a couple of years ago, we were talking about the shipping container wall and she pointed out the, the fun fact that Doug Ducey is the first and so far only elected official who presided over a dismantling of a border wall. And I like to point that out whenever possible. Not that former Governor Ducey listens to the podcast, probably. And if you do, Governor Ducey, you need to send us some money to make up for all the damage.

0:13:56 - (Chris Clarke): But it's just, it's a kind of a, a funny, ironic fact that this conservative, anti-immigrant Republican governor presided over the dismantling of a border wall.

0:14:11 - (Andrea Hoerr): Yeah, it is, it is definitely a rich, rich part of the history. And one of the reasons that we created the original website is we wanted to tell our version of the history. We wanted to make sure that all the stories were represented from our perspective instead of being disseminated through the lens of politics and people who were coming at it from a completely different perspective and a completely different mind frame.

0:14:37 - (Chris Clarke): Right.

0:14:38 - (Andrea Hoerr): You know, for us, this is a spiritual, culturally important place that serves so many functions. And, you know, you think about biodiversity. What is biodiversity and why is that important? Now, keep in mind, I am not an academic, I'm not a scientist, I'm a retired IT person. But even I can understand that biodiversity is important. The military understands that biodiversity is important. They have management plans on all their bases to protect biodiversity as a national security thing.

0:15:10 - (Andrea Hoerr): Right. So why are we just willfully disregarding the fact that this is so important to the health and well-being of not only humans, but all the 10 million species that are interconnected. We're just one of those. And we act as if we can do whatever we want without any concern for the repercussions.

0:15:37 - (Chris Clarke): Was going to ask if jaguars are one of the animals that are of concern in this area because I know I know the general region is like the jaguar hotspot for, for the U.S. yeah.

0:15:51 - (Andrea Hoerr): Absolutely. The most recent jaguar sightings have actually been in the Huachuca Mountains. And we know that they are crossing back and forth from this area down to Sonora and back again. We have the evidence on various wildlife cameras managed by various organizations and confirmed. And where are they going to go?

0:16:13 - (Chris Clarke): Yep.

0:16:14 - (Andrea Hoerr): You asked about biodiversity. Well, one of the other things that's a key component of biodiversity is water. So not only are they pumping out groundwater, damaging springs, when we, when I was out there, and I'll tell you a little bit more about my field trip on Tuesday. They're, they're grading the border road and making it easy for the big trucks to come in and out. Right. Well, they're choking off waterways.

0:16:41 - (Andrea Hoerr): We have ephemeral waterways in this area. When the monsoons come, when the winter rains come, water sheets off of that landscape and goes through these established waterways. They're being chopped up by debris, by rubble, by dead trees. We saw live oaks that had just been destroyed. Toss willy nilly what happens when the rains come. All of that's going to get backed up against the wall and cause more problems.

0:17:09 - (Andrea Hoerr): Going to cause erosion at the wall.

0:17:11 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah, it's in the long run a self-correcting thing probably, but you know, the damage done in the interim. I remember hearing about really bad flooding in a quite a different setting in urban Nogales because of the wall at the time and storm sewers that went under the border being closed off and just a huge amount of human inconvenience and suffering as a result of people building border infrastructure not understanding how water works in the desert.

0:17:45 - (Andrea Hoerr): Yeah, and some of that was, was remediated partially after the fact by installing storm gates so that when you know the rains are forecast and we know they know they're in the area, they can manually open the floodgates, allow the water to come through and then manually close them again. Well, that requires human intervention and it's less than perfect.

0:18:08 - (Chris Clarke): Right.

0:18:09 - (Andrea Hoerr): There's a lot of erosion that's happening. One of the places I was at a couple months ago was over at San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge. Blackwater Draw is a very wet area and they installed storm gates there and they also installed wildlife openings. So the wildlife openings were a direct result from various lawsuits filed I think Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity to create some way for wildlife to still cross.

0:18:42 - (Chris Clarke): Right.

0:18:43 - (Andrea Hoerr): So after years of negotiation back and forth, untold millions of dollars in legal fees. Okay, fine. Well you can have ape, you know, and they range from fairly tall and pretty tiny where just maybe rabbits can get through.

0:18:57 - (Chris Clarke): Right.

0:18:58 - (Andrea Hoerr): When I was out there last. The larger wildlife gates have been strong.

0:19:05 - (Chris Clarke): With barbed wire just to keep them closed or to.

0:19:09 - (Andrea Hoerr): No, probably to prevent human activity from utilizing the gates. Okay. So ground truthing is still really important because, okay, we have complied with the lawsuit, we've installed these gates, but guess what? We're going to rattle. We're going to rap them. Part wire. Well, that does absolutely no good. But in fact, when you're out there, if you're standing by those wildlife openings and there's a little bit of wind, the wall makes a noise. It goes it.

0:20:19 - (Andrea Hoerr): And it's loud and it's disruptive. So tell me again how this is enabling wildlife to migrate from Sonora to the US and back again.

0:20:31 - (Chris Clarke): That's.

0:20:31 - (Andrea Hoerr): It makes stunning. No sense. Absolutely stunning.

0:20:37 - (Chris Clarke): So what's. What's happening on the 15th?

0:20:40 - (Andrea Hoerr): Yeah, so on the 15th, we are hosting a rally from noon to 4, and it's going to feature prayer and art and spoken word music. We're going to do a procession to the newest sections of the wall. And we have just a stellar lineup of people and artists. Our special guest is the chairman of the San Xavier District of Tohono, Oklahoma Nation, Austin Nunez. We also will be welcoming Sheriff David Hathaway in Santa Cruz County.

0:21:11 - (Andrea Hoerr): He has been a huge ally to the fight for years. Really good guy. He owns land right in the area. And we just found out yesterday that Representative Adalita Grijalva is going to join us as well. So we've got great people who are passionate, deeply connected to the land joining us. We'll have nass. We'll have. We'll have banners. You can see my. I've got a jaguar headdress that I made. You know, just get out there and express our love and devotion to this place.

0:21:45 - (Andrea Hoerr): And art, as you know, is. Is such an important way to reach people.

0:21:49 - (Chris Clarke): Absolutely.

0:21:50 - (Andrea Hoerr): We can't just be yelling all the time. We have to make it be from the heart, you know, from the gut, from our internal connection to the land. That is our intention for the rally.

0:22:04 - (Chris Clarke): And aside from celebrating the valley and the wildlife and the people that are connected with it, is there a specific ask with this rally or.

0:22:13 - (Andrea Hoerr): Yeah, we don't have a specific ask yet other than awareness. And we will be doing campaigns. There is another group of people who are putting together action plans, so we will be getting that out to people, hopefully before the rally. Um, but, you know, just find community and. And I feel so strongly that you cannot really grasp the magnitude of what's happened here. Until you get there, until you bear witness for yourself, until you feel the beauty and the magic of this place and then realize it's being actively destroyed, that in and of itself is an important outcome.

0:23:00 - (Andrea Hoerr): Getting that gut connection. Because that's when things become real.

0:23:04 - (Chris Clarke): Yep. So how do people find out more about this event? November 15th?

0:23:10 - (Andrea Hoerr): Yeah. So we have Instagram page called Rally for the Valley. So you can Google Rally for the Valley on Instagram. We also have it on the borderwallresistance.com website. You can find me on bluesky under the handle Awilddre. That's the letter A, U, Y, O dre all in word. And we will be getting information out in other media outlets locally here in Tucson. We're working on some ride sharing options from Tucson, including a small band.

0:23:44 - (Andrea Hoerr): Because it is kind of the challenge to get out there.

0:23:47 - (Chris Clarke): Right.

0:23:48 - (Andrea Hoerr): And if people are concerned about safety because it is a militarized zone, I want to tell you my experience. On Tuesday, I was out there with the other two organizers for the rally. We brought our masks and our signs. We had an inflatable jaguar suit.

0:24:03 - (Chris Clarke): Oh, excellent.

0:24:05 - (Andrea Hoerr): It was so much fun. I mean, it was. It was heartbreaking and fun, you know, because we were able to get out there and just dance and just be and just hold our masks and wear our suit and dance around. And when we were out there, we were stopped by a few construction security people, a couple of border patrol folks. And they were not hostile. They were not intimidating us. They were curious. They wanted to make sure that we were not posing a threat and that we knew where the safe zones were for the construction.

0:24:39 - (Andrea Hoerr): The only thing that happened that we were a little meh about was the border patrol sent out a helicopter to check us out. Keep in mind, it's three of us. One wearing a jaguar suit and two holding up masks. They buzzed us. You know, we thought they were going to land. And then they saw the dancing jaguar and they just laughed and waved and took off. So if you're worried about your personal safety, I understand that.

0:25:05 - (Andrea Hoerr): Right. This is my experience. And it's been two days ago. To me, we have the legal right to be there. And I felt like there was a good level of understanding.

0:25:18 - (Chris Clarke): And I understand that one of the people that you were with at least is Mexican American. And so sounds like ICE didn't show up and carted anybody away.

0:25:28 - (Andrea Hoerr): No, not at all. Yeah. And you know, honestly, the border patrol, strangely enough, had been pretty understanding about a lot of the protest activities and the need for wildlife cameras. They could have destroyed the wildlife cameras, they didn't, you know, they made sure that we got, got in, got, got to reclaim them, found better sites to put them that were not in the way of the construction. So it's easy to paint everybody with a broad stroke. But I choose to try not to do that. Right.

0:26:03 - (Chris Clarke): A lot of different kinds of people work for agencies.

0:26:06 - (Andrea Hoerr): That's right, yeah. We talked to one gentleman who was with a contractor who's an archaeological manager, and he was very curious. And we talked, we talked about the challenges, we talked about the biodiversity problem. And, you know, he was pretty sympathetic.

0:26:23 - (Chris Clarke): Yep.

0:26:24 - (Andrea Hoerr): So, you know, there's a lot more hearts and minds that can be won over, even in those groups of people.

0:26:32 - (Chris Clarke): So given that this is a pretty remote area, aside from worrying about law enforcement, what should people be aware of if they plan to be taking part in this rally? Do you have recommendations for clothing, what to bring? Backpack full of snacks for everybody. What do you have in mind?

0:26:48 - (Andrea Hoerr): Well, it's, it's the desert, so you gotta make sure you're hydrated and you got your electrolytes, make sure you've got some protection. It'll probably be, you know, 80ish out there. There's usually, you know, some amount of wind. We'll have a couple of canopies so that people can get shaped from a getting out there perspective, logistically, I have a Honda crv. It's two wheel drive, it's fine on those roads.

0:27:15 - (Andrea Hoerr): Subaru, truck, you know, anything that's a little bit more high clearance, make it just fine.

0:27:21 - (Chris Clarke): Excellent. So, okay, is there anything I have neglected to ask you that's something that you were hoping you'd get a chance to say?

0:27:31 - (Andrea Hoerr): No, I think we covered what I wanted and more. So thank you again for the opportunity. I really hope to see many of you out in the Valley on November 15th. You're going to be blown away by the beauty of and by the community. It's a privilege to spend time with.

0:27:45 - (Chris Clarke): These folks and we would be very interested in hearing any audio that anybody comes up with from this event. If you've got a smartphone, you got everything you need to make audio that is well within our quality control metric. So please feel free to send us little snippets of Representative Grijalva's talk or whatever is notable. I just really hope it's a good time. And thank you so much for putting it together.

0:28:13 - (Andrea Hoerr): Yeah, thank you. Thanks again for giving me an opportunity to talk about this to a wider audience.

0:28:17 - (Chris Clarke): Chris, Andrea Hoerr, thank you for joining us in our virtual Studio and look forward to talking more about copper mines in the Santa Ritas and lots of other stuff going on down in that corner of the desert.

0:28:33 - (Andrea Hoerr): You got it. Anytime, Chris Thanks.

0:29:04 - (Chris Clarke): And that's it for this episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. Once again, I want to thank Andrea Hoerr for joining us in the studio and also for the donation, which was very much appreciated. Again, 90 miles from needles.com donate if you want to help us out and we really could use your help. I also want to thank Joe Jeffrey, our voiceover guy, Martine Mancha, who created our podcast artwork, and Fred Bell, our Nature Sounds recordist.

0:29:33 - (Chris Clarke): Our theme song, Moody Western, is by Brightside Studio. Other music in this episode is by Music Dog. And speaking of dogs, if you want to send Heart the Dog a Get well soon card, you can do that care of the Desert Advocacy Media Network, P.O. box 12729 Palms, CA 92277. I do hope you check out the event in the San Rafael Valley on November 15th. If you're anywhere in the neighborhood, it promises to be an inspiring time.

0:30:06 - (Chris Clarke): And until next week, please take care of yourselves. The desert needs you all. Bye now. 90 miles from Needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network.