By Michelle Steinman, Air Force Civil Engineer Center Environmental Directorate, Wildland Fire Branch, originally published in the Fall 2020 edition of “Natural Selections,” the newsletter of the DoD Natural Resources Program55.
Wildfire risk has dramatically increased, particularly in the western United States, as a result of changing climatic conditions. Warmer temperature trends, along with increased periods of drought, are exacerbating large and intense wildfire outbreaks. Unplanned wildfires on installations not only lead to devastating impacts to infrastructure and natural resources, but also threaten the military mission. DoD focuses on wildfire management as an important component of installation planning and resilience. In particular, the Air Force is at the forefront of creating a structured process that effectively coordinates with stakeholders to successfully mitigate and manage wildfires.
The Air Force established the AFWFB under Civil Engineering Transformation to specialize in managing wildland fire threats. Since 2012, the AFWFB has grown into an interagency network of nationally qualified wildland firefighters. The group is focused on enabling mission readiness by maintaining ecosystem integrity and mitigating wildfire risk at Air Force installations. AFWFB has over 80 staff members, including wildland fire experts from the Air Force, the FWS, Colorado State University (CSU), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Forest Stewards Guild, and the University of Montana. Headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio, TX, the AFWFB’s responsibilities include developing policy and guidance; leveraging partnerships with land management agencies; issuing and certifying National Wildfire Coordinating Group qualifications; collecting and analyzing wildland fire data, and vehicle and equipment authorizations; and developing wildland fire management plans.
Field support is a key component of the AFWFB’s strategy with 14 strategically placed Wildland Support Modules (WSMs). WSMs are made of up to 12 wildland fire experts with a suite of vehicles and equipment. The WSMs focus on executing hazardous fuel reduction projects that support each installation’s unique INRMP and Wildland Fire Management Plan, thus increasing the installations’ resilience to wildland fire. The WSMs have facilitated better working relationships between natural resources managers and fire and emergency service (FES) personnel who have collectively reduced hazardous fuels on over 130,000 acres through prescribed burns and brush removal each year. As a qualified and capable resource, the WSMs supplement FES and mutual aid wildfire response to more than 100 wildfires annually.
The interagency makeup of the AFWFB allows for sharing resources and improving competencies across all agencies. Personnel gain critical on-the-ground experience with fire behavior across a variety of fuel types and weather conditions. Prescribed burns are one example of important interagency collaboration to prevent wildland fires. Prescribed burns reduce the amount of excessive vegetation on the forest floor, encourage the growth of native vegetation while killing off invasive species, and maintain plant and animal species habitats that depend on periodic fires. Recently, the Ellsworth AFB WSM, including the installation’s natural resources and FES personnel, partnered with the National Park Service (NPS) and Box Elder Volunteer Fire Department to complete a 273- acre prescribed burn on the installation. The burn improved management of natural habitats and rangeland conditions, while reducing the hazardous fuel load. Prescribed burns also increase an installation’s resilience through reducing the risk of a wildland fire outbreak. Ellsworth WSM and FES also assisted the NPS and FWS with a 260-acre prescribed burn at Mount Rushmore National Memorial.
55 https://www.denix.osd.mil/nr/
Gulf Coastal Plain Ecosystem Partnership56
Florida’s Western Panhandle is one of the most rapidly growing areas in the Nation; its pristine coastal region is under intense development pressure. Rapid growth and the loss of green space are creating serious encroachment issues for Eglin Air Force Base (AFB), Naval Air Station Pensacola (NAS), and NAS Whiting Field. The most serious issues include concerns about low-level flights and weapons testing in the face of encroaching development.
From a conservation perspective, the area includes the largest remaining stands of natural longleaf pine forests and some of the last undeveloped coastline on the Gulf Coast. The pine forests shelter rare and listed species, including one of the largest population of the [previously endangered and now federally-threatened] Red- Cockaded Woodpecker. Conservation organizations have concerns about timber production and sustainable forestry, outdoor recreation, conserving biodiversity, wildlife management, and protecting water resources.
The Gulf Coastal Plain Ecosystem Partnership (GCPEP), formed in 1996 via a Memorandum of Understanding, launched a joint planning process to identify conservation goals and actions, and to provide buffers for military lands. Nongovernment partners have contributed funds and office space, and have provided volunteers, public outreach, and other services. To date, the partnership has protected over one million acres.
56 http://www.cooperativeconservationamerica.org/viewproject.asp?pid=544
Sonoran Desert Ecosystem Initiative
This Initiative protects the desert ecosystem in a 55-million-acre area in Arizona, California, and the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California Norte. The U.S. portion of the Sonoran Desert is dominated by federally managed lands. Collectively, these lands are adversely impacted by human population growth-related impacts of increased development and fragmentation of natural landscapes. Because it is a rapidly growing region, the extent of these impacts on the region’s biological resources is likely to intensify. These human-related disturbances also accelerate the spread of invasive plants, which is one of the most serious threats to the persistence of Sonoran Desert native ecosystems. In addition, as the landscape becomes fragmented and otherwise degraded by incompatible human activities, the effects of long-term drought on desert species are exacerbated.
To address the above challenges, the Sonoran Desert Ecosystem Initiative (hereafter the Initiative) was designed by The Nature Conservancy and The Sonoran Institute and funded by the DoD Legacy Resource Management (Legacy) Program and Bureau of Land Management. The principle objectives of the project were to: provide a proactive approach to conservation planning that focuses on conserving native biodiversity and ecological processes within a federal land management context; encourage coordination of management activities across jurisdictional boundaries to address mutual resource management objectives; and facilitate partnerships to increase each agency’s ability to accomplish its mission while meeting its stewardship mandates.
The Initiative focused on three connected components: monitoring the ecosystem and coordinating management; biodiversity management that is tailored to specific sites “and [that also] provides model lessons to apply to other sites . . . across the region”; and management of invasive plants, which are a major threat to the desert ecosystems.
Educational Institutions
Educational institutions are important DoD partners in the effort to conserve biodiversity. The Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units (CESU) provide research, technical assistance, and education to federal land management agencies and their partners. Involvement by educational institutions is primarily through research funded by DoD and other grants, cooperative agreements to support installation needs through staffing and other applied support, and other involvement as subject matter experts. Educational partners bring expertise and capacity in support of military land management. See Chapter 7 “Funding Natural Resources Conservation on Military Lands” for a discussion of contracts and cooperative agreements that enable university support of DoD biodiversity management needs.
Universities bring a wide range of expertise to the table. Familiarity with a region or locality can make universities indispensable due to their knowledge of specific ecosystems and species, the natural processes that sustain them, and their response to various disturbance agents and regimes. Management and planning no doubt benefit from such local or regional knowledge. Some universities have specialized knowledge and experience with military land management and operating on an installation. The most robust and far-reaching of such programs is The Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands at Colorado State University. The program has a core staff with broad and specialized expertise in natural and cultural resources and environmental compliance disciplines, and provides technical support to DoD installations, military services and headquarters via research, applied science and planning, and extensive DoD staffing support across the Continental United States (CONUS) and outside of the Continental United States (OCONUS).
Similar, albeit smaller programs that generally focus on support to installations closer to home exist at several other universities such as Texas A&M University (Natural Resources Institute), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University a.k.a. Virginia Tech (Conservation Management Institute), and The University of Montana (Center for Integrated Research on the Environment). From the military’s perspective, the ideal university partner (or other cooperator or contractor, for that matter) will have a proven credentials that include expertise in subject matter, the procedures required to execute the project, and familiarity with working on military lands (e.g., access, security/safety, planning, military missions/training, military organizations and structure). Comprehensive knowledge of military lands management is requisite for military-specific work such as Integrated Natural Resource Management Plans, NEPA documents, and other support.
Partnerships between universities and DoD entities are mutually beneficial, and can fit especially well with Land Grant Universities with missions that include teaching, research and extension. Importantly, university support to military conservation efforts can include students at all levels. Applied projects are thus executed while providing hands-on experience to undergraduate and graduate students. There are ample opportunities for research, and much of that is funded by grants from various sources, some associated with DoD (see Chapter 7 “Funding Natural Resources Conservation on Military Lands” for more on funding sources). In some cases, installations may partner with academic institutions to complete research that would benefit installation resource management or conservation. In other cases, academics pursue research grants where the study site or resource of interest is on military lands. Pre-coordination and approval to conduct the research would obviously be needed for the researcher to proceed. Such research arrangements can provide unique opportunities for researchers and expand the body of scientific knowledge needed by natural resources managers.
Next Page: Box 6.4: Leveraging university support for rare species of the New Jersey Pinelands (from Powledge 2008)
Author
David S. Jones, RA IV, Ecologist/Project Manager
Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands
Warner College of Natural Resources
Colorado State University
Examples of conservation partnerships
Examples of conservation partnerships