Wild Chiles, the Coronado National Forest, and the Cascading Effects of Badly Managed Environmental Policies

chile pequin/ chiltepin/ bird eye pepper from my garden

Years ago, in another life--my childhood--wild native chiles, chiltepin, the official chile of Texas, grew near a cowpen on my Dugat grandparents' land. We called them "bird eye peppers," not to be confused with the Thai peppers known by the same name. All I know is that the hot sauce that my father made with vinegar and these chile peppers tasted SO good on homegrown peas. Years later, I also grew those peppers, more recently here near Atlanta, Georgia. I dry the peppers and grind them into pepper flakes to flavor everything from scrambled eggs to soups and stews. So hot and so good!

 I didn't know all those years ago that there was a place in southern Arizona called the Wild Chile Botanical Area in the Tumacacori Highlands of the Coronado National Forest, a park of about 4, 830 acres, located along the United States-Mexico border. But in 2015, Tom and I drove south from our new home in Eagar, Arizona, for the Nogales District of the Coronado National Forest, where I learned first-hand of this protected home of those chilies I love so much.

We spent a day wandering this beautiful area, a day that remains in my memory of another wonderful outdoor experience with Tom, who loved these wild places. (Click on a photo for an expanded view.)

trail through the brush, Coronado National Forest

Tom would be distressed to know that this area where we spent so many happy hours has also fallen prey to heavy construction of Donald Trump's border wall. The Center for Biological Diversity reports that the Trump administration waived dozens of environmental laws in order to begin blasting for the double wall "along the boundary of Coronado National Memorial, Coronado National Forest and the San Rafael Valley — one of the most important remaining wildlife corridors between the United States and Mexico for endangered animals like jaguars and ocelots."

 

Some people in nearby populated areas support the border wall construction until it impacts places that have special significance to them. According to KERA news, the town of Douglas, Arizona, is sealed off from Mexico by a border wall constructed under the George W. Bush administration and completed under the first Trump administration. In 2020, a resident of Douglas, Arizona, was reported as saying that the border wall had made his town safer. But then he learned that dynamiting for border wall access was taking place near Guadalupe Canyon, east of Douglas, where he likes to hunt deer. A border wall around the town, he said, was fine, but not in those wild areas where surveillance technology would be the better choice. 

 

It's easy to support--or even just be indifferent to--invasive or destructive policies that don't impact one's self. But when they do, we react with surprise or shock, having not heeded that well-known quote of Dr. Martin Luther King's, "what affects one directly affects all indirectly." Who knows what human first realized that the consequences of actions radiate beyond their original targets, from humans to the natural world.

The loss of trees can lead to a carbon sink, leading to warmer temperatures and, eventually, if extensive, to global warming.  Tree roots absorb water and also hold onto soil, so losing trees can lead to erosion, the collapse of hillsides in heavy rains, the swelling of waterways with sediment, causing floods. The loss of an animal species can have equally devastating consequences. One jaguar, one black bear, one wolf may seem unimportant, but take away top predators and the prey they rely on can explode in population, with vast, unintended consequences. Mice and rats can enter populated areas, looking for food that has become scarce in their natural habitats and carrying diseases that sicken humans. Too many elk or deer in a forested area can lead to heavy grazing that decimates trees and shrubs so that they fail to mature and act as shade, leading to drier conditions, the explosion of grass growth, and perhaps more wildfires. 

Our current administration little cares for environmental policies that protect our natural areas, as border wall construction attests. The Trump administration also wants to build more roads in our national forests to increase timber production. The policy change is written in the most positive way--taking land management decisions out of the purview of national oversight and into local hands--but the consequences of such a change can have far-reaching effects: More roads lead to more human access. More human access leads to further erosion of the landscape and more chances of wildfires begun by ill-managed campfires or a spark from a vehicle. And so on.

Erosion caused by road in Coronado National Forest

Now that Tom is gone, I appreciate even more the memories of that day in the Coronado National Forest, the photos that I took, the time we spent together in a landscape that retained some of the wildness that humans from the distant past had also enjoyed and on whose abundance their lives were sustained.

We must protect these areas for future generations, for their loss can lead to dire consequences we little foresee now.   

Tom enjoying the natural areas he loved, Coronado National Forest