[CPEO-MEF] BUFFER ZONES: "South Carolina Lowcountry Sentinel Landscape"

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

DOD supports land conservation around local military bases, ‘We love flying over farmland.’
	
By Tony Kukulich
Charleston Post and Courier (SC)
February 16, 2024

BEAUFORT — It’s not often that the U.S. Department of Defense is mentioned in discussion about long-term conservation goals.

But, as F-35s from Marine Air Station Beaufort lift off the runway headed toward Townsend Bombing Range located 82 miles to the south in coastal Georgia, it’s apparent why the DOD has a very real interest in the land that surrounds its military installations. Flying jets laden with fuel and high-explosive munitions over a populated landscape can be risky business. 

As recently as March 2022, an F/A-18D flying from the Beaufort County air station went down in a fiery crash in a rural part of the coastal Lowcountry county. Crew members ejected from the plane, and there were no injuries on the ground. Damage was limited to a stand of live oaks burned by the resulting fire. 

That’s one reason Mary Ryan Krieger, spokesperson for Marine Air Station Beaufort, told The Post and Courier, “We love flying over farmland.”

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.postandcourier.com/militarydigest/lowcountry-land-conservation-military-bases-marines-dod/article_7e175db4-bf7b-11ee-b3be-cf33405a3557.html

—

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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