In late summer, a jaguar padded somewhere near the San Rafael Valley, a pristine grassland nestled between the Patagonia and Huachuca Mountains southeast of Tucson. Trail cameras monitored by Sky Island Alliance confirmed its presence in the “impact zone” of a new 27-mile border wall slated for construction in that high country grasslands.
For conservationists and tribal leaders, the timing couldn’t be more poignant. The wall, if completed, will carve across the very corridor needed by wide-ranging species like jaguar and ocelot to survive.
While the precise location of the jaguar sighting has not been publicly revealed, in part to protect the jaguar from potential hunters or trackers, Eamon Harrity, wildlife program manager for Sky Island Alliance, told Arizona Luminaria it was north of the San Rafael Valley, and that the big cat “almost certainly crossed through the eastern side of those mountains.”
For the Tohono O’odham, the jaguar — O:ṣhad in the O’odham language — is not only an endangered species, but a sacred being. Earlier this year, the San Xavier District Council of the Tohono O’odham Nation passed a resolution recognizing the jaguar’s spiritual and ecological role and calling for its protection and reintroduction throughout its historic range.
The resolution, passed Jan. 21 — but not previously made public — condemns destruction of jaguar habitat as a violation of O’odham religious liberties and urges federal and state agencies to consult Tribal Nationstribes before approving projects like border barriers. The resolution is signed by San Xavier District Chairman Austin Nunez.
The jaguar is “a guardian of the people and the natural world,” the resolution reads, “a sacred being with deep connections to O’odham stories and traditional beliefs.”
The resolution calls for “immediate and coordinated action” from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as Arizona and New Mexico, “to reintroduce jaguars to their historic range within the United States Southwest.”
Nunez told Arizona Luminaria that jaguars are “a form of protection for us.” He added that they now need protection from humans, which is part of why they passed the resolution.
He said he hopes other O’odham districts will pass similar resolutions and the Nation as a whole, possibly as soon as the end of the year, will pass it as well.
“These are perilous times,” Nunez said. He said that while they’re concentrating on other threats to tribal members, including federal funding cuts, he remains gravely concerned about threats to the environment.
“We’re dead set against the wall,” he added.
A wall through a wildlife corridor
Construction of about 27 miles of border wall through the San Rafael Valley has already begun, with the first 30-foot high bollard panels already standing in the flowing grasslands.
Customs and Border Protection awarded a $309 million contract to Fisher Sand & Gravel, a North Dakota-based company with a history of environmental violations. Bulldozers, semi-trucks hauling steel bollards and crews have already begun setting up staging camps across the valley floor.
Both Trump administrations, almost immediately upon taking office in 2017 and again in 2025 issued executive orders to put up more miles of wall along the US-México border. The 2025 order said that the country was experiencing a “large-scale invasion.” According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, there has been, a more than 91% drop in border crossings in the Tucson sector from Fiscal Year 2024 to Fiscal Year 2025.
Sky Island Alliance camera studies found human crossings in the San Rafael Valley to be exceedingly rare. In an August presentation, Harrity noted that visitors to the valley are 10 times more likely to come across a gray fox than another human.
Most human detections — only about five per month in the valley, according to camera studies — were of birders, law enforcement or ranchers — not migrants.
Neither Fisher Sand & Gravel, nor the Department of Homeland Security, responded to a detailed list of questions about the construction.
Erick Meza, who monitors border construction with the Sierra Club, says the scale of the operation will be staggering. “Each truck carries about five panels. At 27 miles, that’s roughly 1,400 truckloads — just for the steel.” Add in heavy equipment, trailers, water tankers — as well as increasing traffic from a nearby mine — and this once quiet stretch of Southern Arizona may start feeling more like an industrial highway, Meza said. That’s a concern for local residents — human and wildlife.
On a recent monitoring trip in September, Meza and Russ McSpadden, Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, watched a pronghorn antelope sprinting along the borderline, dashing south until meeting the wall, then bounding back and forth along it.
Currently, the valley is still partially walled off with barbed wire and vehicle barriers, but gaps remain, and animals can squeeze through or over such barriers, McSpadden said.
A 30-foot wall, however, will stop all mammals heading north or south, and even some birds. Sky Island’s studies show that the bollard-style wall blocks more than 85 percent of wildlife.
For jaguars, which have been detected repeatedly in this corridor over the last two decades, that would mean isolation and, likely, extinction in the U.S. “The jaguar currently here,” Meza said, referring to the recent sighting, “is going to get stuck, live a lonely life, and then die.”
McSpadden put the impacts in broader terms: “This will go down as one of the most destructive assaults on wildlife habitat in modern American history.”
Clay Crowder, assistant director of Arizona Game and Fish Department’s Wildlife Management Division, told Arizona Luminaria they’re focused on jaguar recovery south of the border.
“Arizona is on the periphery of jaguar range and doesn’t contribute to recovery given the fact that there has not been a female jaguar in AZ for about 60 years,” Crowder told Arizona Luminaria in an email.
He said there have been spans of more than a decade where there has been no documented jaguar in the state.
“I know of recent accounts where mammals have been documented moving south and north across the border without human assistance,” Crowder said. “This leads me to believe that despite border wall construction and monitoring activities, we continue to see animals moving across these regions.”
Water beneath the wall
Beyond the wall’s effects on wildlife, conservationists and some landowners worry about water. To build the wall’s deep concrete footers, contractors will need enormous quantities. Based on similar projects, Meza estimates more than one billion gallons will be required for the wall in San Rafael.
Already, crews have drilled multiple wells along the borderline, according to Zach Palma, Mexico program manager for Sky Island Alliance, told Arizona Luminaria.
The Santa Cruz River, which eventually runs north through Tucson, begins its initial southward trickle through the San Rafael Valley and into México. Seasonal floods recharge aquifers and nourish cottonwood groves and an abundance of wildlife. A bollard wall built across its floodplain could act as a dam, McSpadden explained, trapping debris during monsoons and forcing torrents through small openings at destructive speeds.
As construction crews suck more water out of the ground and dam up the flow with the wall, the impacts will be longlasting, Palma said.
“We’re already seeing drought stress, with half the mature oaks in the valley dead,” Palma said. “The wall will only accelerate the collapse. You lose the trees, you lose the shade. The creek dries, the habitat dies. It’s a cascade of ecological devastation.”
Local voices across the border
On the Mexican side, longtime farmer Rubén Peralta, who has worked in the small town of Santa Cruz, Sonora for three decades, said he has received no information about the project. “No one from the United States has explained what impacts we might see,” he told Arizona Luminaria. “If they take water, our wells will drop. We plant cucumbers, lettuce, radish, chiles. Without rain and with less water, it will be very bad.”
The mayor of Santa Cruz, Alma Guadalupe Téllez, worries about both costs and futility. “It’s a huge expense, but migrants will continue crossing elsewhere,” she said. “The water they use for this wall will affect us and the fauna. And here, almost no one crosses. It’s peaceful.”
The San Xavier District’s jaguar resolution is part of a broader coalition effort to halt the project. Multiple organizations — including the Center for Biological Diversity, Sky Island Alliance, Sierra Club, and the Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui Tribes — submitted comments opposing construction. So did thousands of concerned individuals.
They warn that the wall not only blocks wildlife but also desecrates Indigenous sacred lands and violates religious freedoms.
The Department of Homeland Security, however, has invoked waiver authority under the Real ID Act, exempting the project from cornerstone environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
In a July letter, Meza demanded DHS respond to community concerns before proceeding. To date, according to Meza, the department has not replied.
Palma said that the idea that a wall is necessary here is deeply misguided. “This narrative from a thousand miles away that this is imperative for national security doesn’t make sense,” Palma said. “It feels like a foreign power coming into this region.”
The San Xavier District resolution puts it simply: Destroying jaguar habitat is not only an ecological loss, but a spiritual wound. It calls on federal agencies to consult tribes, restore damaged habitats, and recognize the jaguar’s role as a sacred protector.
San Xavier District’s Jaguar Resolution
In January, the San Xavier District Council of the Tohono O’odham Nation passed a resolution with a focus on the jaguar. Known in O’odham as O:ṣhad, the big cat is recognized not only as an endangered species, but as a sacred relative, guardian, and protector of balance in the desert and grasslands.
The resolution, titled “Recognition and Protection of the Sacred O:ṣhad (Jaguar) and Call for Reintroduction to its Native Range,” declares that the destruction of jaguar habitat by projects such as the border wall amounts to a violation of the First Amendment religious liberties of O’odham communities. It also calls for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Arizona and New Mexico, and Tribal Nations to coordinate the reintroduction of jaguars throughout their historic range.
For the O’odham, O:ṣhad is woven into Himdag, or Way of Life. Ancient stories and songs describe the jaguar as a powerful being sent by the Creator to maintain both ecological and spiritual order. Scholars such as Danny Lopez have recorded oral histories in which jaguars appear as guardians, their presence signaling resilience and strength.
That cultural view has persisted into the present. In recent years, several jaguars have returned to southern Arizona, each greeted not only as a conservation milestone but as a sacred reappearance. One, photographed in the Huachuca and Whetstone Mountains, was given the name O:ṣhad Ñu:kudam — Jaguar Protector — through a vote involving students and community members of the Tohono O’odham Nation.
Another, documented in the Huachucas, was named Yo’oko Nashuareo, or Jaguar Warrior, by Pascua Yaqui students.
“These acts were not symbolic,” the joint coalition of Tribal and conservation groups wrote in public comments opposing wall construction. “They were affirmations of cultural survival.”
The San Xavier District resolution goes further than opposing the wall. It urges agencies to protect and restore jaguar habitats, to re-consecrate damaged areas with O’odham spiritual leaders, and to pay ceremonial costs.
The resolution also points to a broader understanding of the relationship between humans and the natural world: that rivers, mountains, and wildlife have been granted personhood and the legal rights associated with it. That reference links O’odham Himdag with a global movement to recognize nature itself as a rights-bearing entity.
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