Border wall construction continues in different parts of the Rio Grande Valley, and research is underway to try to understand if wildlife are able to get around these obstacles.

The state is currently building a border wall on a 1,400-acre property it acquired near Roma in Starr County.

The state and federal border walls are barriers made to keep people out, but researchers say it may also be impeding the flow of wildlife.

As the weather cools, research is starting on a federally funded project to understand the impact on mountain lions.

Lisanne Petracca, a carnivore ecologist at the Cesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute in Kingsville, said the institute is monitoring mountain lion habitat, gene flow, and population density.

"[It’s] to investigate essentially how lions are moving through this borderland region between Texas and Mexico in the context of the border barrier system,” Petracca said. “We are placing GPS collars on lions. We are putting camera traps along hundreds of miles of borderlands area to assess patterns of where these lions are."

Mountain lions are very rare in the Valley. The last reported sighting was in Cameron County in March 2021.

The research is funded by about a million dollars from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Fish and Wildlife Service. The agencies want to know if the wall is impacting wildlife, and Petracca says the best data they have now is what GPS collars have shown.

The study will also look into the usefulness of wildlife openings in the wall, which Petracca said is about 8 by 11 inches.

"We have determined that a mountain lion skull could get through, so it could permit the passage of mountain lions,” Petracca said. “At the moment, with the crossings installed randomly as they are, it's not necessarily the best corridors where mountain lions are actually moving."

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