Pursuant to the Sikes Act, mission sustainability is a primary driver of INRMPs. “It is DoD policy in accordance with…[DoD Instruction 4715.03, Environmental Conservation Program]… to implement and maintain natural resources conservation programs to ensure access to land, air, and water resources for realistic military training and testing while ensuring that the natural resources under the Secretary of Defense’s stewardship and control are managed to support and be consistent with the military mission.” (DoD Manual 4715.03). This DoD Manual 4715.03 (2013) lists five guiding INRMP principles in support of mission sustainability:
(1) The goal of DoD environmental programs and policies is conserving the environment for mission sustainability.
(2) Each DoD Component will ensure that its INRMPs is, to the extent appropriate, applicable and consistent with the use of the installation, and enables the preparedness of the military services to provide for no net loss in the capability of military installation lands to support the military mission of the installation, pursuant to the Sikes Act.
(3) During the planning process, natural resources personnel consider appropriate management goals, objectives, and timelines for implementing actions to protect or enhance installation mission capabilities when determining INRMP resourcing priorities. Projects developed to support INRMP goals and objectives incorporate sustainable practices and take advantage of ecosystem management principles, where practicable.
(4) The DoD Component integrates mission requirements and priorities identified in the INRMP in other environmental programs and policies, where applicable, to help ensure these natural resources are maintained in the best ecological condition possible to fully support current and future mission requirements. The DoD Component annually evaluates INRMP effectiveness in preventing net loss, including accounting for instances where effective workarounds are implemented by natural resources personnel to ensure no net loss of training areas.
(5) There may be instances in which a net loss may be unavoidable to fulfill legal requirements other than the Sikes Act, such as complying with a biological opinion pursuant to the provisions of sections 1531-1544 of Reference (c) or protecting wetlands pursuant to section 1251 of Title 33, U.S.C., also known and referred to in this manual as “the Clean Water Act”) (Reference (h)). To the extent practicable, the installation will identify the loss of mission capability in these instances in its INRMP, and will include a discussion of measures taken to minimize the effects of any restrictions on training and testing.
Conflicts between mission and conservation present opportunities for creative solutions. As pressures increase for more frequent or intense training activity as well as new missions, natural resource managers must continually try to identify ways to mitigate the resulting impacts to natural resources. Recommendations by Tazik et al. (1990) were developed and promoted from the Integrated Training Area Management (ITAM) Program to help resource managers identify alternative actions to use in mitigating natural resource impacts (primarily soil and vegetation damage) caused by military training activities. In general, physical impacts to an installation’s natural resources can be minimized by one of five management techniques: limit total use, redistribute use, modify kinds of uses, alter the behavior of use, and manipulate the natural resources for increased durability. Strategies and tools for
implementing these techniques are shown in Figure 5.2.
Although the strategies described by Tazik et al. focus on soil and vegetation damage, many are relevant to minimize direct or indirect impacts to sensitive biological resources such as listed plants, animals and species at risk, and rare or critical habitat. These strategies and others are widely implemented by natural resource managers across DoD lands and by the Army’s Integrated Training Area Management (ITAM) installation programs. Additional and related strategies are exemplified by a recent project that examined federally-listed and at-risk species, with a focus on Fort Carson in Colorado. The installation used a wide variety of strategies, including off-limits areas, limited-use areas, a maneuver damage program, wet weather deferment, training area rest and rotation, and geographic and seasonally-driven species restrictions (Grunau et al. 2017).
Another strategy is temporal (e.g., seasonal) closures or restrictions to protect species or habitat during periods that are ecologically important, for example, for nesting, brood-rearing, or hibernation. Examples of such strategies can be found at most installations: seasonal protections for bat hibernacula at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; spatial and temporal restrictions for sage grouse nesting and brood rearing areas within hundreds of thousands of acres of contiguous shrub-steppe habitat at Yakima Training Center, Washington; training rules and restrictions to protect habitat for ground squirrels, an important food source for raptors on the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, which overlaps with the NGB’s Orchard Combat Training Center, Idaho; and training restrictions within areas managed with prescribed fire for open prairie habitats to favor military missions and the eastern regal fritillary butterfly at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania.
When it comes to planning and conflict resolution between military training and sensitive resources, there are undoubtedly challenges where something has to give. However, there are often solutions to perceived conflicts that result in win-win scenarios for both conservation and training. Many installations develop an “environmental operations map” or similar that, in conjunction with range operations regulations and SOPs, helps display and disseminate geographic and temporal restrictions related to environmental sensitivities.
It is critical that natural resources staff, as well as others updating and revising INRMPs, have a good understanding of military missions and activities on the installation, and current or anticipated changes to training activities. Examples of specific types of training and mission information include:
- Vehicles and tactics
- Changes in weapons/weapon systems and live-fire activities (implications for soil disturbance, habitat degradation loss, wildland fire ignitions, noise, etc.)
- Off-road maneuvers, implications of vehicle types, missions and seasonality, mechanized vs. motorized
- Changes in number and size of units and major training events
- Changes in seasonality of training
- Other elements related to military training type and intensity such as land use loads, metrics, distribution of training across the landscape, and training footprint considerations and trends (Jones 2011).
- Contemporary Operating Environment (COE) facilities and use—e.g., military operations in urban terrain (MOUT)—can contribute to uneven distribution, and patchy disturbance.
- Shifts in equipment due to Theatre of War (TOW) considerations, such as the heavy to medium vehicle conversions starting in the mid-2000s. This was reflective of a changing focus from temperate Eurasian environments characteristic of post-Cold War settings to more arid Middle Eastern environments and an increase in COE associated with the Global War on Terror. The missions, distribution of use (e.g., less off-road/free maneuver, training impact severity (e.g., wet vs. dry soils) and ecological impacts may shift with these changes in global TOW drivers over time.
Next Page: Plan implementation
Author
David S. Jones, RA IV, Ecologist/Project Manager
Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands
Warner College of Natural Resources
Colorado State University