OPINION:
In an act of 11th hour desperation, wildlife conservation groups have ramped up efforts to stop the building of the U.S.-Mexico border wall by claiming construction would impede the roaming of the jaguar.
Hey, who doesn’t like a jaguar. Right? But on a scale called American Policy, with a cat on one side, and — oh, I don’t know — the fate of the nation’s security, borders, economy, crime and counterterrorism operations on the other, think the natural conclusion might be: bye jaguar. Don’t let the border wall hit ya on the way home.
Cut People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ tears.
But wait just a minute.
Turns out that argument — build walls; jaguars will die — isn’t even based in fact. The left, apparently blinded by anger over the wall, is not only making a case for open borders based on the needs of an animal, but also making a case for open borders based on the perceived needs of 1 percent of population of said animal.
Talk about a special interest.
Judicial Watch has the story: “Wildlife conservation groups are collaborating with a federal government agency to halt construction of the southern border wall by fudging science to claim that unimpeded trans-border corridors are essential to an ’endangered species’ with 99 percent of its population in Mexico.”
What’s that — 99 percent you say? Hold the phone on that figure.
Specifically, these left-leaning entities, including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Defenders of Wildlife, are arguing that huge swaths of lands in Arizona and New Mexico — roughly 750,000 acres — should remain wall-less and designated critical habitat areas for jaguars under the federal Endangered Species Act. They’ve petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make the designation, relying on relaxed ESA rules ushered in by the Barack Obama administration to show the worthiness of their cause.
Only problem is: The numbers are being fudged. By a lot. Remember that 99 percent these leftist groups slung about?
“One of the world’s leading big cat experts, Dr. Alan Rabinowitz, confirms that less than one percent of the jaguar habitat in the world is in the United States and that there’s nothing about the lands in the southwest U.S. that make them critical to the continued survival of the jaguar as a species,” Judicial Watch notes.
Oh, and there’s this: A Fish and Wildlife Service designation would bring about a jaguar recovery plan that could cost taxpayers $607 million over the next 50 years, the nonprofit watchdog group asserts.
Seems a no-brainer.
Jaguars are good and all. But not at that price tag. And certainly not for the risk their protection brings to American people.
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