[CPEO-MEF] ENCROACHMENT, BIOTA: "Defense Department becomes a wildlife protector"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Defense Department becomes a wildlife protector

The military is working with environmental groups and local governments to create buffer zones around bases where development threatened to encroach on combat training. It's been a conservation boon.

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times
April 27, 2013

 
Many of the nation's 440 military bases were established in what were once sparsely populated hinterlands where soldiers trained without complaints from neighbors about the roar of warplanes and the sound of gunfire and explosions.

Now, with urban sprawl pushing up against perimeter fences, the U.S. Department of Defense has quietly become a major protector of wilderness and ranch lands. Working with conservation organizations and local governments, its Readiness and Environmental Protection Initiative has helped buy nearly $1 billion worth of land to create buffer zones around 64 military bases where development threatened to encroach on combat training.

The program has been a boon for conservation, creating more than 260,000 acres of new sanctuaries - off limits to development in perpetuity - for some of the rarest plants and animals on earth: the California red-legged frog, the Pacific pocket mouse, the Chorro creek bog thistle and, in North Carolina, rare longleaf pine habitat for the red-cockaded woodpecker.

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pentagon-habitat-20130428,0,627837.story

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545
Fax: 650-961-8918
LSiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org




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