Sarah Loftus worked as the archaeologist for Big Bend National Park in Texas from 2023-2026. She lives in Hallowell.

West Texas may seem far from home here in Maine, but Homeland Security waiving 28 key environmental laws to expedite border wall construction in the Big Bend Region and within Big Bend National Park and ease the award of billions of tax dollars to private contractors should have everyone concerned.

As a border state, Maine is similarly vulnerable to the application of these environmental waivers, which can extend up to 100 miles from an international border — imagine the Saint John River, Saint Croix River and Acadia National Park.

If you haven’t been down there, “Big Bend” refers to a huge arc in the Rio Grande River, which forms the winding border between Texas and Mexico. It’s a quiet, rugged place in the greater Chihuahuan Desert where the border is naturally defined by sharp edges and shear 1,000-foot canyons. There’s a lot of open space and untamed beauty shaped by millions of years of ancient volcanoes and Cretaceous-age oceans. The skies are star-filled and recognized as some of the darkest in the United States.

The Rio Grande River. (Sarah Loftus)

The population is sparse but made up of devoted people with a profound love for the land going back generations, and for Native people thousands of years. The Rio Grande is the lifeblood of this region and people have lived along these waters on both sides of the river for over 13,000 years.

In Big Bend National Park alone and along the Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River there are thousands of archaeological sites representing a vast span of human history. Sites range from 10,000-year-old Paleoindian fluted points, to thousand-year-old rock art still powerfully vibrant in red and yellow ochre, to Spanish period missions, the Comanche Trail and 19th century adobe and stacked stone ranch houses.

Unauthorized border crossings along the Rio Grande in the Big Bend region have always been historically low. The Big Bend Sector covers 26.5% of the U.S-Mexico border but totaled less than 2% of Customs and Border Patrol apprehensions in 2025.

There is collective agreement among Republicans and Democrats alike that walls are unnecessary and loud bipartisan opposition to the project from all affected county sheriffs, judges and past park superintendents. To waive standard environmental laws, like the Clean Water Act, put in place to protect our lands from exactly this kind of federal overreach and waste, is totally unacceptable.

Not abiding by the National Historic Preservation Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, to name a few, and not engaging in meaningful consultation with tribal partners and local communities as required by law is a death knell for the environment, culture and history of the Rio Grande.

I was the archaeologist at Big Bend National Park until a few months ago and it is impossible to overstate how devastating these walls and other infrastructure (vehicle barriers, patrol roads, towers, lights, fiber optic cables and razor wire) will be to the culture and environment of this region and to the nationally significant archaeology along the Rio Grande.

Walls and barriers will cut off wildlife corridors, destroy cultural heritage, bisect sensitive Chihuahuan Desert ecosystems, brighten international recognized dark skies, strip private and public river access, destroy the livelihoods and economies of people who depend on the river and kill a vibrant border culture.

While we live on the quieter northern border, Maine is not immune to similar use of these environmental waivers. Please reach out to your representatives and to Secretary Mullin and hold them accountable.

Big Bend National Park belongs to all of us. They are wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money awarded through no-bid contracts to build unnecessary border infrastructure that will destroy communities, public and private land, people’s livelihoods and the region’s incredibly rich biodiversity and cultural resources.