Editorial Illustration for Science Friday
Title: “Will Border Wall Construction Deplete Desert Springs?”
Art director: Emma Gometz
pub. November 7, 2025
Read the article here.
Volunteers are monitoring natural springs in an Arizona wilderness to understand what the construction of a border wall will cost wildlife.
"The Trump administration is erecting a 27-mile section of border wall that will cut across the valley’s wide-open shortgrass prairie. In the process, construction workers will draw copious amounts of groundwater to fashion cement footers for 30-foot-high steel bollards. This worries conservationists, who say wall construction could deplete springs that sustain animals in one of the last open wildlife corridors between Arizona and Mexico.
In the San Rafael Valley, the wall will slice through an area with a rich diversity of mammals, reptiles, insects, birds, and plants.”