U.S.-Mexican border's affect on the environment

When Sierra Club activist Krista Schlyer learned that hundreds of miles of recently built walls along the U.S.-Mexico border were wreaking havoc on sensitive wildlands and wildlife, she took notice. More important, she took pictures.

These photos, accompanied by her narrative of the wild places of the borderlands, fill the nearly 300 pages of her new book "Continental Divide: Wildlife, People, and the Border Wall." In November, the National Outdoor Book Awards named it winner of the 2013 award for Nature and the Environment.

In making its selection, the book awards noted:

"This book is one of the most important works on nature to be published this year. But, first, a clarification:  the title “Continental Divide” is not about the separation of the Atlantic and Pacific watersheds. Rather it’s about the man-made separation between the U.S. and Mexico: the border wall. The wall, of course, is controversial, but left out of the public debate has been the wall’s effect on the natural environment.  In this ground breaking work, Author Krista Schlyer reports on what’s been forgotten – and what she has to say is not good. Congress has allowed environmental laws near the border to be waived, and as a result the wall has devastated wildlife migration paths while at the same time rerouting human traffic through the most pristine and sensitive of wild lands. The public needs to be fully informed of the true costs of the wall, and Schlyer’s book is an important step in that direction."

Read more about "Continental Divide" and get involved with the Sierra Club's Borderlands Team.

Photo caption: Photographer and writer Krista Schlyer. Credit: Chris Linder / The Planet