Botanists are scouring the US-Mexico border to document a forgotten ecosystem split by a giant wall

Bright yellow blooms carpet the ground, a sharp contrast to the imposing steel bollards of the border wall topped with rolls of razor wire as members of the California's Baja Rare conservation project lead a botanical expedition with botanists and citizen scientists to document native plants along the U.S.- Mexico border on Friday, April 19, 2024, in the Ejido Jacume in the Tecate Municipality of Baja Calif., Mexico.

On a recent day, Bioblitz volunteers scrutinized a bright yellow blooming carpet of common Goldfields, a sharp contrast to the imposing steel bollards of the border wall topped with rolls of razor wire. Some navigated their way around piles of empty water jugs, a gray hoodie and empty cans of tuna fish left under the branches of native flora like the Tecate Cypress.

Since then, there has been a groundswell of initiatives to document the borderland’s flora and fauna as climate change coupled with habitat loss, pollution and development have hammered the world’s biodiversity. One estimate in 2019 warns that a million plant and animal species face extinction within decades, a rate of loss 1,000 times greater than expected.

“It’s scary from that standpoint, yet those are the areas where we really need more information because there’s hardly any protected area on the south side,” he said. Tijuana-based botanist Mariana Fernandez of Expediciones Botánicas periodically checks on the plants. Working with Rebman, she is pushing Baja California to adopt more protections for its native plants. Currently only a fraction are on Mexico’s federal protection list.

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