Why the Trump Admin Suddenly Wants to Wall Off Big Bend National Park
Why not waive 28 federal laws to fast-track 112 miles of steel wall through a national park where border crossings have dropped 74%?
If you’ve ever stood at the mouth of Santa Elena Canyon and watched the Rio Grande slide between 1,500-foot limestone walls, you know there’s nothing else like it in this country. The scale of the place shuts your brain off for a second. You stop thinking about your phone and your inbox and whatever fight you had that morning. You just stand there and watch the river move.
Black bears cross that river. Mountain lions thread through the desert ranges on either side. Peregrine falcons nest in the canyon walls above you. At night, the sky over Big Bend is one of the darkest in North America, so full of stars it looks fake. The park protects 800,000 acres of Chihuahuan Desert at the intersection of the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madre, and that convergence has produced one of the most biologically rich landscapes on the continent. The Rio Grande connects all of it, a living corridor running through the middle of a wilderness that still feels, in 2026, like it did before anyone drew a …
