Study Butte entrance to Big Bend National Park. (Sergio Chapa/Borderzine.com)

El Big Bend: Un parque nacional, un pueblo fantasma y las piedras que gritan a través de las redes sociales

Y él respondió: Os digo que si estos callaran, las piedras clamarán. Lucas 19:40
Quizás el día más feliz de mi recorrido con el periodista Sergio Chapa fue cuando visitamos la región del Big Bend, cuyo nombre proviene del recodo formado por el Río Bravo que delinea la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos. Dicha región se encuentra entre los estados de Texas, Chihuahua y Coahuila, y frecuentemente se define como la parte de Texas localizada al sur de la carretera 90 y al oeste del Río Pecos que contiene los montes Chisos y Davis. El Big Bend abarca una extensión de aproximadamente 4,000 km² y está integrada por seis áreas que se encuentran bajo protección federal y estatal: el parque estatal Big Bend Ranch, el parque nacional del Big Bend y el Black Gap (las tres en la parte estadounidense), y las zonas de protección de flora y fauna Cañón de Santa Elena, Ocampo y Maderas del Carmen (localizadas en México). El parque nacional del Big Bend

Salimos desde temprano de Alpine, Texas rumbo al parque nacional del Big Bend.

You can cross on foot or pay a couple of bucks to be taken across in a row boat. (Sergio Chapa/Borderzine.com)

Big Bend: A park, a ghost town and crying rocks

After a hearty breakfast, Lupita and I set out for Big Bend National Park and the Boquillas border crossing. It was a two-hour drive with no cell phone service to the town of Study Butte where we made a pit stop. We were puzzled to watch a woman mumbling to herself and waging an unceasing war with a flyswatter to kill flies on a bench outside the store. For every fly that she killed, five more seemed to take its place. It was a 100 degrees and seemed too hot to expend that much energy on anything.

El Paso Zoo curator Rick LoBello’s mission is to share his love for animals with students

EL PASO – As a child growing up in the northeast part of the country, Rick Louis LoBello fell in love with wild animals when mountain gorillas jumped out at him from the pages of National Geographic. Today as the El Paso Zoo’s education curator, he shares that childhood fascination with new generations. LoBello, 60, grew up two miles from Lake Erie. As a child he spent his days bird watching, searching for salamanders along the creek and reading about nature in Angola, New York. “I could get on my bicycle, go down to the creek and study the animals,” he fondly reminisces his childhood years.

Bill would increase Border Patrol access to sensitive federal lands, national parks

WASHINGTON – The sweeping vistas of Big Bend National Park may be breathtaking, but the park’s proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border makes the deep canyons of the Rio Grande kindling for political feuds. For much of the 20.7 million acres of federally owned land on the border, access for both visitors and officials – including Border Patrol agents – is limited to foot and horseback traffic to preserve the environment. The relationship between the National Park Service and the Border Patrol could change with a bill the House of Representatives passed this week. H.R. 2578, an omnibus bill that includes multiple provisions for conservation, includes a provision that would waive 16 laws to allow the Border Patrol nearly unlimited access federal lands within 100 miles of the border. This would allow trucks to drive where motor vehicles are normally unauthorized, construction for infrastructure in otherwise untouched areas and drones to patrol where overflights are otherwise prohibited.