© Peter McBride/Aurora Photos

Natural Allies
What brings the Conservancy and other conservation organizations to the table is a treasure trove of wild places, animals and plants. The Pentagon manages nearly 30 million acres, scattered among more than 425 major installations, encompassing every imaginable type of terrain and ecosystem.

If biodiversity is the yardstick, the military’s land management has been extraordinary. Nearly 330 endangered or threatened species are found on Defense Department lands, more than are found on any other federal lands, including the National Park system, which contains nearly three times as many acres.

Parcels of pinyon/juniper prairie buffer the perimeter of Fort Carson.
© Peter McBride/Aurora Photos

Protecting buffer areas is important for soldiers training for combat.
© Peter McBride/Aurora Photos

That wealth of biological diversity makes the military a natural ally for the Conservancy, says Brian McPeek, who coordinates the Conservancy’s work with the Army at Fort Carson. For nearly 20 years, the Conservancy has helped the military manage natural resources and comply with environmental laws that protect species on many of the military’s installations around the country.

But “complying with environmental laws is not the only reason the military has protected lands on its bases,” says Bob Barnes, a retired Army brigadier general working for the Conservancy. “As far as the military’s mission goes, the environment is a stage prop for practicing the art of war, and soldiers need a swamp to be a swamp, a desert to be a desert. The military has to take good care of the land it’s got, because it’s not getting any more.”

Despite that stewardship, some at the Defense Department believe that because of encroaching development, the military is now “being penalized for our successes,” says Jim Van Ness, an environmental attorney for the Pentagon. He notes that lands preserved on bases for military training have become the last redoubts of many threatened and endangered species. And complying with the laws that protect those species can conflict directly with a base’s training mission. “While we protected the [wildlife] habitat on our part, it was being lost outside, making ours more important than ever.”

The biggest penalty could come in the form of base closures, a possibility on everyone’s mind. In 2005 the  Defense Department will attempt to cut costs by closing military bases, perhaps as many as one out of every four. Pentagon officials say the combination of development on the fence lines and endangered species within will be a major factor in deciding whether to close a base.

An answer to dealing with the military’s dilemma came in 2002, when, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress authorized the Department of Defense to seek outside partnerships to create buffer zones around military bases where the training mission was threatened by encroachment. Such buffers could be acquired through purchase, through partnership agreements and through development restrictions known as easements. Congress recognized that protecting the training mission also involved protecting critical wildlife habitat outside the bases, in part to prevent the clashes that occur when endangered species are forced onto bases seeking their last remaining habitat. But it also recognized that the buffer zones curtail commercial or residential developments that could bring dangerous training to a halt much more quickly than finding an endangered species.

By advocating the buffering partnership, the Defense Department has embarked on a new strategy: large-scale conservation. “For a long time, most of what we did was reactive, and it really showed the weakness of micromanaging for any endangered species,” explains George Carellas, a senior Army environmental official. “You can’t just protect one tiny place where the species lives and say you’ve done your job. What if you lose that one place? What if that one place is crucial to some aspect of military training? The buffering strategy is proactive, trying to preserve the ecosystem as a whole, not just pieces here and there.” 

This year, Congress appropriated $12.5 million for the buffering project, marking the first time the program has received explicit funding. The Conservancy and an array of hunting and environmental groups had pushed Congress for much more—$250 million—and are asking for considerable increases over the appropriation in the future. The Natural Resources Defense Council is one of the players. The NRDC, a group that has often clashed with the military, recently challenged the Pentagon’s rollback of various environmental protections at military installations. Still, in the case of the buffering project, “there is tremendous potential here, and we are actively supporting this partnership,” says Andrew Wetzler, an NRDC attorney. “Since we sue the military on a regular basis over environmental issues, we know both sides of them, and this side is win-win across the board.”

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