[Source: Joanna Dodder, Prescott Courier] -- Federal plans to build a two-layer fence across most of Arizona's border with Mexico would be hard to complete by the 2008 deadline, and the environmental and cultural damage would be severe, a top U.S. Army Corps of Engineers archaeologist said Thursday. Patience Patterson, a federal archaeologist who helps plan construction of new border fences, spoke at the Arizona Historic Preservation Partnership Conference in Prescott Friday about the challenges of saving cultural and environmental resources in the path of Mexican border fence construction. While Patterson discussed the planning-level challenges, archaeologist David Hart talked about the physical challenges of conducting archaeological surveys and digs in advance of the new fences. Hart works for a government contractor, Northland Research Inc. While at first the Border Patrol viewed the fence-line archaeologists as an impediment, after about 1.5 years now they all get along, Hart said. Unfortunately, he still gets to deal with the 100-plus degree temperatures with little shade. Well-equipped drug-smuggler lookouts watch him from the hilltops, although it helps to have a Border Patrol officer nearby. Often-corrupt Mexican police drive right over his work area without care, since he's actually working 60 feet south of the livestock fencing on the vast, remote Tohono O'odham Reservation. The new border protection fence will be on the actual international border where he is working. Some of the newer border protection fencing tries to cut off vehicular traffic while still allowing wildlife and foot traffic to pass through. The fence builders avoid saguaros and other plants on the Tohono O'odham Reservation that are culturally important to the tribe, Patterson said. They try to avoid archaeological sites and ancient burials, but when necessary, they record them and move them. "We're trying to work this out in the best environmental fashion we can," Patterson said. However, some environmental degradation is beyond their control. They see the abandoned vehicles, trash and illegal roads that cut through the once-pristine Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge (pictured) that the federal government set aside in 1936, for example. [Note: To read the full article, click here.]
