"The last thing a military knows how to do is protect the environment.."
That's something only said by ignorant people....
Pentagon Making Room for Wildlife at Military Bases
By DINA FINE MARON of Greenwire
Published: February 18, 2010
As residential development sprawls toward once-isolated military bases, the Pentagon finds itself managing mini-refuges for threatened and endangered animals and plants.
Consider Fort Benning, Ga., where the appearance of a state-protected gopher tortoise in the path of troops and tanks has been known to halt training exercises. It's Army policy to steer clear of the base's 3,000 or so tortoises and keep track of their burrows, said John Brent, the base's chief of environmental management.
But watching out for tortoises and federally protected creatures is not a job the Department of Defense enjoys.
So DOD has formed odd-bedfellow alliances with environmentalists to protect habitat in hopes of keeping wildlife off the endangered species list by keeping development away from military bases.
"The military has a tremendous interest in keeping candidate species off the list and helping endangered species recover and get taken off the list," said Bob Barnes, the nonprofit Nature Conservancy's DOD liaison. The presence of listed species, he said, restricts what the military can do on its land.
The Pentagon protects its interests through the 2003 Readiness and Environmental Protection Initiative (REPI), which authorizes the services to partner with local governments or private groups to buy land or easements to serve as undeveloped buffers around bases.
nytimes.com
They also think they know how to protect themselves from AGW...
So our secretary of defense, when he signed out the Quadrennial Defense Review, which is an overarching strategic document for our Department of Defense, has directed his staff, specifically an office called the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, to do some very detailed studies of the impact of sea-level rise on some of our Department of Defense installations, and including places the Navy is very interested in, like Coronado, near San Diego, out in California; Camp LeJeune, where we have a major Marine base; and the Norfolk, Virginia area.
And that - those studies will probably take about two years or so. And I've been asked before, it's like, well, geez, can we wait two years? And I said: Well, two years is about seven millimeters of sea-level rise. I think we can wait seven millimeters to try to really understand and get the right answers so that while we do not - absolutely cannot be caught sort of behind - behind the changes, we also do not want to spend money too soon or what we would call ahead of need.
So we have time to get the answer. Now is the time to start acknowledging that we need to look at these studies, and the secretary of defense has directed those studies to happen.
FLATOW: And what would - if the studies verify what you're saying, and I don't think there's any reason to doubt that what you're saying about sea-level rise is real, what actions, what are the first actions that the Navy would take to combat the sea-level rise?
Rear Adm. TITLEY: I think, Ira, that each place is likely to be different.
FLATOW: Give me an example of - pick a place. Tell me what - let's say San Diego.
Rear Adm. TITLEY: Okay. For San Diego, I think again, and the studies will need to be done. But do you build slightly increased levees? Do you take a look at that? Do you take a look at raising some of the infrastructure? Do you - let's say if some of the hotel services underneath the pier, and as the water slowly comes up, do you need to, say, redesign those piers so that the hotel services would not flood, let's say, on a storm tide?
So these are all things that our engineers in our naval facilities command, in our installations command, are starting to think about today. And again, while these numbers are very, very significant, we do have time. We have time to get this right
npr.org |
