AUSTIN, Texas — The state's top land official denounced the Biden administration's attempt to protect a mussel species as a "political" shell game aimed at stopping Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) from deploying buoys in the U.S.-Mexico water border to curb illegal immigration .
“Unfortunately, the Biden administration is turning the Endangered Species Act into a political tool to push an agenda rather than ensuring true conservation efforts are implemented," Texas General Land Office Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said in a statement Friday about her complaint to the Biden administration over the endangerment declaration. "This administration is proposing to roll back reasonable improvements made to this law and are simply ignoring the successful accomplishments of private preservationists, state, and local land managers by adding more federal red tape regulations."
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The Justice Department took sudden action in late July to shut down Abbott's water buoys, which were installed weeks earlier to block immigrants from crossing the Rio Grande into Eagle Pass, Texas. The DOJ argued that the buoys posed "threats to navigation and public safety and present humanitarian concerns." The buoys stretch 1,000 feet in length, roughly one-fifth of a mile on the 2,000-mile southern boundary.
The Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service announced within 24 hours of the lawsuit that it would list two species of freshwater mussels, including the Mexican fawnsfoot, as endangered. In its proposal to deem the species endangered, FWS cited research that predicted the mussel population would decline “from a ‘low’ current condition to ‘very low’ over the next 25 years" and "be extinct 50 years into the future.”
If successful, the endangerment declaration could force Abbott to take down the buoys and prevent the state from dropping more buoys in the border river in an effort to protect the mussels. Buckingham sent FWS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service a letter opposing the federal action.
A Texas congressman said the government's concern for mussels in the Rio Grande would be ironic given that tens of thousands of noncitizens have trampled through the same spot of river to illegally enter the United States since 2021.
"Clearly, Biden is more concerned about disrupting the habitat of the Mexican mussels than disrupting the operations of Mexican cartels who are destroying the lives of Americans and migrants alike," House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington, a Republican, said in a statement in early August. "Where was Biden's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s concerns when millions of migrants trampled the mussel’s 'critical habitat' while illegally crossing the Rio Grande?"
Buckingham said she was "extremely concerned" about the FWS proposal because of the negative and far-reaching impact that deeming the Rio Grande a "critical habitat" would have on the state's mineral, oil, and gas revenues — and, in turn, the economy.
"These ESA listing determinations can impact thousands of acres of Texas land, water, and energy resources, and significantly affect the lives of landowners, ranchers, and farmers," Buckingham wrote in the letter.
"People have to live, and societies have to function. In the real world, people can’t put food on their tables and roofs over their children’s heads without engaging in everyday, practical economics," Buckingham said. "If there is a choice to be made between real economic need and an abstract aspiration under the ESA to cater to every imaginable species (see, e.g., the above-referenced fatmuckets, pimplebacks, and false spikes), people are always and understandably going to look after their own families first."
Record-high numbers of illegal immigrants encountered across the southern border since 2021 prompted Abbott to take a slew of actions to bolster security, including installing the water border barrier.
Since being sued, Abbott has refused to take down floating barriers in direct defiance of the Biden administration's order to remove them. Democrats have complained that the buoys could harm immigrants who try to get across in that area.
Earlier this month, a deceased immigrant was found near the buoy. Texas officials said the individual drowned further upstream and was carried down the river into the buoys. A second deceased immigrant was also found in the river but was later determined not to have been recovered near the buoys.
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Abbott faces additional legal troubles from Mexico, which denounced the buoys and threatened legal action. Most recently, the DOJ stated in its lawsuit that 90% of the buoys had drifted onto the Mexico side of the Rio Grande. Mexico has said the buoys violate international water agreements.
The federal government has been aware of the shrinking population of the mussels for more than three decades. The FWS first called attention to the mussels in 1991, when it published a notice in the Federal Register at the time that outlined its plans to review whether the invertebrate animal should be added to the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
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