Call for Artists: Wildlife Artwork for Proposed Border Wall

PETA Offers Cash Prize and Art Supplies for Submission That Best Reflects How Wall’s Blockage of Water and Food Sources Dooms Animals

For Immediate Release:
March 5, 2019

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

As the debate over funding President Donald Trump’s border wall rages on, PETA has put out a call for submissions of pro-wildlife artwork that the group will apply to display on the wall, should it be erected.

PETA will advocate for the placement of all submissions and is offering a $1,000 cash prize (plus $500 worth of art supplies) for the one that best reflects how President Trump’s wall would spell death for members of more than 1,500 species of native animals and plants and would cut off animals who aren’t endangered, such as javelinas, from water and food sources that they depend on. It would also prevent them from accessing migratory pathways, because—unlike humans—many species can’t scale, burrow under, or fly over a high, solid structure of that sort.

“No animal who is simply trying to stay alive and isn’t a threat to anyone should suffer for humans’ political power plays,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA hopes the artwork that we receive will never be needed—but if it is, we hope it will help to remind everyone who sees the wall that animals’ right to live in peace was disrespected and disregarded.”

PETA notes that the Salineño Wildlife Preserve, the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, the National Butterfly Center, and Bentsen–Rio Grande Valley State Park are just some of the wildlife-protection areas that could be severely damaged or wiped out entirely by the proposed wall. Animals under threat include ocelots, ferruginous pygmy owls, Mexican gray wolves, desert bighorn sheep, cottontail rabbits, Quino checkerspot butterflies, and dozens of ground or low-flying bird species.

PETA’s motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way,” and the group opposes speciesism, a supremacist worldview that certain species (such as human beings, or perhaps American-born human beings) are inherently more valuable than others.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.