About 22 miles south of the former mining town of Patagonia, Arizona, down a winding, unpaved mountain road that passes cows grazing on open range, stands a cottonwood tree believed to be at least 200 years old. The “grandmother” tree, as some locals call it, is imperiled and already showing signs of stress, almost as if it knows its fate. The leaves are yellowing prematurely, falling to the ground at the height of summer. On July 27th, a construction crew felled three neighboring trees to build an extension of President Donald Trump’s wall along the US-Mexico border.
An activist climbed up the last tree standing two days later and ever since, someone has sat on a platform hoisted onto the tree’s branches. They say they’ll sit there as long as it takes, because as long as someone is in the tree, it can’t be cut down.
The protest is about more than one cottonwood. “This tree represents a literal line in the sand against border militarization in general,” said Russ McSpadden, the Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.
In recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security has revived its effort to wall off the border, dispatching construction crews to remote parts of Texas, Arizona, and the Tohono O’odham Nation’s reservation lands to finish Trump’s wall — and has waived environmental laws to get it built, causing backlash from the tiny desert town of Ajo to the even tinier ghost town of Terlingua.
This latest construction push is happening despite record-low encounters at the border.
