On the Wild Border, A Revival of Nature

CAJON BONITO, Mexico -- When Valer Austin arrived at her ranch, hidden in the deep folds of desert canyons, her workers told her, "You just missed the bear."

"This is as wild as you can get," Austin said, and she didn't mean "wild" as in violent and dangerous, the way the border often is these days, but rather "wild" as in "wildlife."

Between the United States and Mexico, where the Continental Divide bisects the deserts of Chihuahua and Sonora, lies one of the most vital wildlife corridors in the hemisphere. This is a big, unpeopled place, dominated by sprawling cattle ranches, home to lions, beavers, coyotes -- and plenty of dope smugglers.

There is the rare black hawk and 400 species of bee. Within miles of each other, you might see parrots and bison, and also trash piles left by wandering migrants trying to cross over the international frontier. The Mexican government wants to reintroduce the gray wolf in the corridor in a project similar to the one that brought wolves back to Yellowstone National Park. Scientists have found jaguar here, and also drug runners with AK-47s leading a forced march of men carrying bales of marijuana.

Driving around last week, Austin chanced on two Mexican soldiers with heavy weapons sitting by one of her cow gates. They told her vaguely, "We're just waiting on somebody," and Austin left them to their business, whatever it was. That's the way it works out here. "We're not the Border Patrol," she said.

"People look out the window of their cars and ask, 'What is this place?' They don't know," Austin said. "But I think this is one of the most important places in the world." Especially for migratory animals. "This is going to be a big deal someday," she said.

Austin, 67, is a well-to-do artist from the Upper East Side of New York who moved to the Southwest desert 25 years ago with her husband, Josiah, a Dallas investor. The couple bought a ranch in Arizona, then two more in Mexico. Her skin is browned, her hair's gone gray, and she's as lean as the country. She admits to being obsessed with restoring habitat degraded by a century of overgrazing.

To recharge wetlands and revive rivers, the Austins and their ranch hands, with bulldozers, have erected thousands of low rock dams along the creek beds in Mexico, which usually run dry before the summer monsoons bring water back to the Sonoran desert all at once. "What we're doing is what nature would do if we weren't here," she said.

The Austins are part of a growing movement of eco-ranchers along the border. The best known is the Malpai Borderlands Group along the Arizona-New Mexico state line, a coalition of landowners, scientists, environmentalists and the government working to protect endangered wildlife and endangered ranchers. Austin is beginning to organize a similar group in Mexico.

In the past year, the U.S. government has erected miles of fencealong the border and across ranch land. Before the picket of barriers was built, cowboys from north or south of the border would routinely cross to hunt for stray cows.

Building the fence along the edge of national parks, wildlife refuges and the ranch lands has been controversial. Coalitions of environmentalists, landowners, civil rights groups and Indian tribes have filed lawsuits, but they have not slowed the building down much. To complete a large section of wall, former homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff waived 36 laws during construction, a blanket authority given him by Congress in 2005 to finish 670 miles of fence.

While many people see enhanced security in the fence, Austin sees a barrier to wildlife and natural processes. She drove up to one section where wildfire -- a good thing -- had burned the grass on the U.S. side but stopped at the road that runs along the fence, a road that worked as a firebreak.

"We're trying to manage landscapes on both sides of the border as a single corridor, connected, and the governments of Mexico and the United States don't," she said. "Our government put a fence right through the habitat."

Asked what would be better than a fence, Austin would like to see Americans and Mexicans working together, replanting native grasses and restoring watersheds. "I guess that might sound overly optimistic," she said.

Asked how native grass might secure the border, Austin replied, "I'm not so sure it's all that secure now. I've climbed that fence myself, and I'm a grandmother."