Sacred Saguaro

Cutting down or destroying a saguaro cactus in Arizona is a felony that could land you in prison. But the Department of Homeland Security destroyed hundreds of these ancient, sacred plants to make way for the border wall.

A single saguaro can take ten years to reach one inch in height. They don’t typically flower or sprout a single arm until they’ve been around for 70 years. These ancient giants, adorned with brilliant silky white flowers pollinated by lesser long nosed bats, serve as a deeply sacred ceremonial plant to the Tohono O’odham people and a keystone species of the Sonoran Desert.

The construction crews are now gone. So is the president who blasted off mountains and raised entire ecosystems to build a wall through in the wild. But the carcasses and decomposing arms of these sacred giants still lay strewn across the Arizona borderlands, baking in the July sun.