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This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

The Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday that Secretary Kristi Noem has waived the protections of the Endangered Species Act and other federal statutes to “ensure the expeditious construction” of the border wall through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.

Funds were appropriated for border wall construction in the Rio Grande Valley during the first Trump administration. Now, the administration is eyeing this biodiverse area in Starr County for its next stage of border fortification.

By the time the refuge was established in 1979, the Rio Grande Valley had already lost most of its native habitat. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pieced together property to protect biodiversity and create a wildlife corridor along the Rio Grande.

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Endangered ocelots are being reintroduced in the scrub thorn landscape of Starr County. Other notable species in the area include green jays and the chachalaca, a tropical bird known for its distinctive call.

Following Noem’s waivers, the federal government will no longer have to follow the National Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Water Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act and other seminal federal laws to construct the border wall on 13 tracts in the........

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