Awards

• Winner of National Outdoor Book Awards (Nature/Environment) 2013
• Winner of New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards (Nature/Environment) 2013

Overview

The topic of the border wall between the United States and Mexico continues to be broadly and hotly debated: on national news media, by local and state governments, and even in coffee shops and over the dinner table. By now, broad segments of the population have heard widely varying opinions about the wall’s effect on illegal immigration, international politics, and the drug war. But what about the wall’s effect on the Sonoran pronghorn antelope herds and the kit fox? On the Mexican gray wolf, the ocelot, the jaguar, and the bighorn sheep? In unforgettable images and evocative text, Continental Divide: Wildlife, People, and the Border Wall helps readers understand all that is at stake. As Krista Schlyer explains,  the remoteness of this region from most US citizens’ lives, coupled with the news media’s focus on illegal immigration and drug violence, has left many with an incomplete picture. As she reminds us, this largely isolated natural area, stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, hosts a number of rare ecosystems: Arizona’s last free-flowing river, the San Pedro; the grasslands of New Mexico, some of the last undeveloped prairies on the continent; the single most diverse birding area in the US, located along the lower Rio Grande River in Texas; and habitat and migration corridors for some of both nations’ most imperiled species.?In documenting the changes to the ecosystems and human communities along the border while the wall was being built, Schlyer realized that the impacts of immigration policy on wildlife, on landowners, and on border towns were not fully understood by either policy makers or the general public. The wall not only has disrupted the ancestral routes of wildlife; it has also rerouted human traffic through the most pristine and sensitive of wildlands, causing additional destruction, conflict, and death—without solving the original problem.

Full Product Details

9781603447430

Table of Contents

Reviews

Krista Schlyer has lived the border problems. Hers is a narrative balanced with words and images. She's tasted the arid land's flavors and distilled the essential truth: that it's madness to drive a wedge through our own heart in a misguided effort to keep our nation safe. --Jack Dykinga, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer<br><br>

Krista Schlyer's deeply informative and visually head-turning ode to the rich borderland ecosystems being undone in the mad--in every sense of the word--rush to build a wall between one side of a line in the sand and the other. Should be required reading for any legislator with a hand in federal immigration policy. -- Texas Observer --Brad Tyler Texas Observer (07/03/2013)

Krista Schlyer's magnificent book, Continental Divide: Wildlife, People, and the Border Wall , reveals much truth about a part of the United States that is little known and largely misunderstood. Refuting the popular image of the border as a sterile desert area, her book reveals that the borderlands hold almost unimaginable richness of life and beauty in both human and natural communities. She goes on to outline the almost overwhelming odds against preserving that beauty and interconnectedness in the face of both political and physical barriers. This is the only book that addresses both the human and ecological world that is being torn apart by the failure of both the United States and Mexico to deal with their internal problems related to immigration, drugs, and guns. For those of you who don't know the borderlands, you owe it to yourself to read this and learn. For those you who do, you will both smile and weep at the stunning pictures and poignant text. --Dinah Bear, attorney, border issues Defenders of Wildlife and Humane Borders and also author, amicus brief, supporting a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the waiver of laws for construction of the border wall and roads <br><br>

Author Information

KRISTA SCHLYER is a writer and photographer based in the Washington, DC, area. Her work has appeared in National Parks, Defenders, High Country News, Ranger Rick, National Geographic News, Audubon, and Outdoor Photographer. She is a member of the International League of Conservation Photographers and the North American Nature Photographers Association.

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