Tres Arroyos - Terlingua cabins & camping

05/15/2026

05/12/2026

05/02/2026

It’s another Trans-Pecos Thursday! This week we are highlighting the Chihuahuan Fishhook Cactus!

04/22/2026

Today, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has once again updated its now-infamous "Smart Wall Map."

And yes, the border wall is back in Big Bend National Park. If anyone thought this was somehow over, it is very much not. Even though it's been relatively quiet on the news front, this public lands fight is as active as it's ever been. Literally nothing has changed in the past month.

The newly updated map shows a steel bollard border wall planned at four different locations in the national park, including the most popular put-in for river trips through Santa Elena Canyon. It also shows a wall along the entire Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River and through Amistad National Recreation Area.

All of these places are federal public land.

“If anything close to what’s on this map is built, it will go down as the biggest butchery inflicted on an American national park in the last century,” Laiken Jordahl, National Public Lands Advocate at the Center of Biological Diversity and staunch defender of the Big Bend region, said in an Instagram post today.

See screenshots of the updated map, plus ways you can take action in my latest article: https://ourpubliclandsandwaters.substack.com/p/big-bend-national-park-border-wall

04/16/2026

BORDER WALL LAWSUIT: While the center previously filed a lawsuit over open records, this one focuses on constitutional issues. We'll be covering this more in the coming days.

TERLINGUA, Texas— The Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Ruidosa Church, and a Big Bend-area river guide and landowner sued the Department of Homeland Security today for unconstitutionally waiving dozens of laws to fast-track border wall construction through the Big Bend region of Texas. The lawsuit argues the department is exercising powers Congress never authorized.

“The Department of Homeland Security has unconstitutionally gutted our nation’s bedrock environmental laws to build a wildlife-killing wall that would permanently lock away the Rio Grande,” said Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This is straight out of the playbook they used in Arizona, where federal contractors blew up sacred Indigenous sites, bulldozed canyon walls and drained precious aquifers to build border walls. They’re trying to slam an iron curtain through the Big Bend region, gouging a wound that will never heal into one of America’s most beautiful wild places.”

Today’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Texas, argues the federal government violated several constitutional provisions, including the major questions doctrine, which requires clear congressional approval for actions with vast economic and political consequences.

Today’s lawsuit also challenges Homeland Security’s claim that the Big Bend Sector is an “area of high illegal entry,” noting that it has the lowest number of crossings along the southern border and historically low apprehensions. The sector covers roughly a quarter of the border but accounts for just 1.3% of all Southwest border apprehensions.

Center for Biological Diversity photo.

04/11/2026

04/02/2026

01/03/2026

Park Update: Critical water shortage in the Chisos Basin, Big Bend National Park.
For more information, please follow the link below.

https://www.nps.gov/bibe/learn/news/2026-01-03-critical-water-shortage.htm