TUCSON – Department of Homeland Security is asking for a billion dollars from the Pentagon for 218 miles of border barrier construction in Arizona, California and New Mexico.

One Southern Arizona wildlife expert says this move will do great damage to our ecosystem.

“This is nothing short of a crime against nature,” said Myles Traphagen, the Borderlands Program Coordinator for the Wildlands Network. “A building of a border wall like this disregards basically the entire evolutionary history of the borderlands.”

Traphagen is concerned about how this project could impact cross-border migration.

“There’s four inches between the steel bollards,” he said. “So, basically any animal that’s wider than four inches is going to be precluded from crossing about 80 percent of the border in those three states.”

Traphagen tells News 4 Tucson, states Attorneys General along with several conservation groups are preparing a lawsuit to challenge this proposed barrier construction in court.