The Other Crisis on the Mexican Border
Eight years ago, while flying 800 feet above the grasslands of southern New Mexico, an unlikely observation changed the course of my life. As I was leaning out the window of a small Cessna above the border of the United States and Mexico, a cold March wind roared through the plane and I could just barely make out the excited words of wildlife scientist Rurik List Sánchez:
“There they are, at the border!”
Bison! We had been searching for them all morning and the day before, and we spotted them just as they were jumping from Mexico to the United States, over a barbed wire border fence that ran between their main food and water resources. I had come to magazine, and by slim chance had happened to witness their international journey in real-time. Research in Mexico had shown that this bison band—one of six free-ranging herds left in North America—had been making this journey almost daily for the past half-century as the herd labored to survive the trials of life in an arid land. Spotting them at the border itself had made the long trip from my home in Washington D.C. worth it.
