[CPEO-MEF] BUFFER ZONES: Florida Sentinel Landscapes Partnership

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Expansion of Federal Land-Use Program Would Benefit Military, Nature, and Communities
Proposed Florida site could limit climate impacts to bases and boost biodiversity and outdoor recreation

By Holly Binns & Zack Greenberg
Pew
January 19, 2024 

In densely populated areas of the U.S., negotiations over land and water conservation almost always come down to competing priorities. In some places, the federal government is surmounting that challenge with a program that offers lasting benefits for nature, communities, economies, and the U.S. military.

The program—a joint project of the U.S. departments of Defense, Agriculture, and the Interior called the Sentinel Landscapes Partnership—plans to designate a suite of new landscapes later this year. A coalition of military installations, federal and state agencies, counties, land trusts, and nongovernmental organizations recently submitted a proposal to establish a new sentinel landscape in a region that is home to multiple military bases, some of the most productive agricultural soils in the state, and more than 100 miles of coastline stretching across three estuary systems. The area also contains habitat for several dozen rare, threatened, or endangered animal and plant species. If approved, the Northeast Florida Sentinel Landscape would be the third such site in the state and would make Florida the only state with three sentinel landscapes. 

The bases encompassed by the proposed landscape include Naval Air Station Jacksonville, the Navy’s largest installation in the southeast, and the 73,000-acre Camp Blanding Joint Training Center, home to Florida’s Army National Guard and Air National Guard. These and other military installations in the region face challenges because of population growth and encroaching development—which can affect weapons testing and other operations—along with climate-driven threats such as wildfires, flooding, storm surge, and sea-level rise. Add to this increasing urbanization across northeast Florida and the value of a sentinel landscape here is clear: It would help the military focus on its core mission while advancing conservation and sustaining agricultural lands and outdoor recreation-based tourism.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2024/01/19/expansion-of-federal-land-use-program-would-benefit-military-nature-and-communities

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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