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Letter: Attack on Butterfly Center is tragic

(Delcia Lopez | For the Guardian) Butterflies flutter together as they are seen taking nectar from native plants at National Butterfly Center on Tuesday Dec. 11, 2018, in Mission.

While I unequivocally do not appreciate The Tribune’s inane habit of attaching half-page advertisements to the pages of regular news, I do fully appreciate Monday’s front-page article (thank you, The Guardian) about how plans for the border wall implicate the complete destruction of the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas.

Just as I thought our nation’s leaders’ policies and ideas couldn’t get much worse, the premeditated, wanton destruction of the rare and valuable border habitat within and around the Butterfly Center and the variety of wildlife dependent on it, for the sake of an unnecessary wall, represents a new nadir for our tragically misguided and morally bereft POTUS and his cronies.

We can employ people to secure the border. The wall and the adverse effects it will have on the lands around the Rio Grande River are just one of too many examples of how Trump’s ignorant disregard of the biology and ecology that support life on Earth is contributing to the rapid demise of planet and its inhabitants, humans included.

If we allow politics and “the economy” to undermine the foundations of a healthy ecosystem, then what, after all, will the wall protect? Destroying the Butterfly Center is the epitome of cutting off our nation’s nose to spite its face.

Tom McKay, Heber City

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