"CBP plans to construct, operate, and maintain approximately 70 miles of tactical infrastructure, including primary pedestrian fence, patrol roads, and access roads along the U.S./Mexico international border in the USBP Rio Grande Valley Sector, Texas. Individual sections will range from approximately 1 to 13 miles in length. The tactical infrastructure will cross multiple land use types, such as agricultural, rural, suburban, and urban. Impacted parcels are both publicly and privately owned. The Project will also encroach on portions of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge (LRGVNWR) and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) in the Rio Grande Valley. This ESP analyzes and documents environmental consequences associated with the Project"--Cover sheet.

The Texas Landscape Project explores conservation and ecology in Texas by presenting a highly visual and deeply researched view of the widespread changes that have affected the state as its population and economy have boomed and as Texans have worked ever harder to safeguard its bountiful but limited natural resources. Covering the entire state, from Pineywoods bottomlands and Panhandle playas to Hill Country springs and Big Bend canyons, the project examines a host of familiar and not so familiar environmental issues. A companion volume to The Texas Legacy Project, this book tracks specific environmental changes that have occurred in Texas using more than 300 color maps, expertly crafted by cartographer Jonathan Ogren, and over 100 photographs that coalesce to fashion a broad portrait of the modern Texas landscape. The rich data, compiled by author David Todd, are presented in clearly written yet marvelously detailed text that gives historical context and contemporary statistics for environmental trends connected to the land, water, air, energy, and built world of the second-largest and second-most populated state in the nation. An engaging read for any environmentalist or conscientious citizen, The Texas Landscape Project provides a true sense of the grand scope of the Lone Star State and the high stakes of protecting it. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.

Behind them, in rural Mexico, remittance money trickles into half-deserted villages where only the very old and young remain, and the soil of abandoned corn fields erodes steadily away down the mountainsides. Ahead of them, at the border, thousands will be apprehended and deported by la migra, only to turn around and make the journey again, and yet again, until they either succeed or die in the attempt. The numbers of these migrants have skyrocketed since the 1980's, causing some analysts to describe it as "the largest mass migration in U.S. history." And though the roots of this phenomenon are tangled and its impacts varied, discussion of Mexico-U.S. migration here at home has tended to focus narrowly on a few specific issues of national security, border enforcement, social services, guestworker programs and earned legalization.