Trump’s new border wall will threaten wildlife in an area where few people pass
The San Rafael valley in Arizona is home to bears, mountain lions and wolves – now their movement will be restricted. Continue the Full Story
‘It’s an absolute travesty’: fears for border wildlife as Trump takes office
Environmentalists are braced for new construction on the president’s signature border wall – and the damage that would wreak. Continue the Full Story
The US government has neglected Native agriculture systems, so Indigenous communities are organizing their own food hubs
On the Hopi reservation in the high desert of northern Arizona, construction is underway. A dilapidated auto garage is being converted into a fully-equipped kitchen, food storage areas, dining room and an attached greenhouse. The new facilities will become the first-ever Hopi-region food hub, used to increase Indigenous access to fresh, healthy and affordable food through farm shares, farmer’s markets, agricultural workshops, seed sharing, cooking lessons and other programs.
‘I was thrilled and shocked’: images raise hopes of return of wild jaguars to the US
The young, muscular male approached from the east at about 4am. He paused briefly in front of the motion-sensor camera, seemingly posing for the photo. “It was overall a moment of euphoria,” says Emily Burns, programme director at the Sky Island Alliance conservation group in Arizona, as she walks along a rutted forest service road towards a canyon framed by lichen-covered cliffs.
‘It healed me’: the Indigenous forager reconnecting Native Americans with their roots
On a warm day in April, Twila Cassadore piloted her pickup truck toward the mountains on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona to scout for wild edible plants. A wet winter and spring rains had transformed the desert into a sea of color: green creosote bushes topped with small yellow flowers, white mariposa lilies, purple lupines and poppies in full bloom.
‘A living pantry’: how an urban food forest in Arizona became a model for climate action
Near downtown Tucson, Arizona, is Dunbar Spring, a neighborhood unlike any other in the city. The unpaved sidewalks are lined with native, food-bearing trees and shrubs fed by rainwater diverted from city streets. One single block has over 100 plant species, including native goji berries, desert ironwood with edamame-like seeds and chuparosa bushes with cucumber-flavored flowers.
Blue corn and melons: meet the seed keepers reviving ancient, resilient crops
On a windy winter day in Acoma Pueblo in north-western New Mexico, Aaron Lowden knelt beside a field near the San Jose River, the tribe’s primary irrigator for centuries. “The soil has been building up,” said Lowden, an Indigenous seed keeper and farmer, pushing his hand into the soft, dark dirt at the base of a stalk of dried Acoma blue corn.
2020 was deadliest year for migrants crossing unlawfully into US via Arizona
© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Micah Garen/Getty Images When the remains of two undocumented migrants were found in the desert of south-western Arizona last July, one body lay next to an arrow drawn in the sand, pointing north, with the word “HELP” written beneath. The men had perished while attempting to cross into the US from Mexico, according to border patrol.
My neighbourhood is being destroyed to pacify his supporters’: the race to complete Trump’s wall
At Sierra Vista Ranch in Arizona near the Mexican border, Troy McDaniel is warming up his helicopter. McDaniel, tall and slim in a tan jumpsuit, began taking flying lessons in the 80s, and has since logged 2,000 hours in the air. The helicopter, a cosy, two-seater Robinson R22 Alpha is considered a work vehicle and used to monitor the 640-acre ranch, but it’s clear he relishes any opportunity to fly. “We will have no fun at all,” he deadpans.
Trump’s border wall construction threatens survival of jaguars in the US
By the 1960s, the North American jaguar had vanished from the southern US borderland after being hunted to extinction. Yet in the mid-1990s, there was a remarkablediscovery: the jaguar had reappeared in the Sky Islands of Arizona, a region of rugged linked mountain ranges spanning the US and Mexico border that boasts the highest biodiversity in inland North America.