An example of the value of universities in partnerships may be seen at the Warren Grove Gunnery Range, a 9,416-acre Air National Guard facility situated in the New Jersey Pinelands. The Pinelands, which include the ecologically famous New Jersey Pine Barrens, form an ecosystem that historically has been characterized by periodic fires. When the gunnery range started compiling its Integrated Resources Management Plan, it needed answers to the basic question: Were the range’s activities compatible with the best biodiversity conservation methods?
Fortunately for the range, Drexel University was an eager research partner. It was a match made in heaven: Warren Grove needed conclusive scientific studies, and Drexel’s Department of Bioscience and Biotechnology had dozens of students eager to do them. Drexel also had Walter F. Bien, the director of Pinelands research at the university and a native of the region.
“I guess we’ve done close to a dozen ecological studies since around 2000 or 2001,” Bien said in an interview. “The military would tell you that they get a big bang for their buck. . .” A big part of that bang is the sheer number of Drexel students involved. “We probably have had easily close to two hundred different people and organizations in those years, so we bring a big network with us,” said Bien.
And the payoff is large for the students as well. “Our students will get a thesis out of some of the work they do. They contribute to the reports we give to the government in support of the INRMP. But along with that, they’ll take their research a step further and do maybe a bit more comprehensive work than what was required for the military, and they present at scientific meetings, they publish—whereas a regular contractor might not be doing these kinds of things.” Nor, he said, would an ordinary contractor be expected to put in the hours the students devote to their work. “For example, this young man working with me on snakes—he probably puts in hundreds of extra hours in a month on his projects simply because he’s trying to get a thesis out of it and he loves what he does. … And I learn a lot from my students, and they make me look good. The trick is having good personnel around you.”
One of Bien’s own specialties is the Knieskerrn’s beaked-rush (Rhynchospora knieskernii), a federally-listed threatened plant that was practically wiped out by development, but that grows happily near and within target zones at the gunnery range. Bien and his students discovered that the plant actually thrives in areas that are periodically disturbed. Bien has written that “military operations, such as mechanical disturbance, ordnance delivery, and prescribed burning, appear to be providing the necessary disturbance regime required for maintaining established sites and colonizing newly disturbed sites.”
Bien is understandably happy about Drexel’s partnership with the Air National Guard. “They work with us; we just have a very good working relationship. I guess that could work in most places, as long as the military would be receptive to that type of a partnership.”
“The productive partnership extends”, he says, “to the FWS”. Because of the Drexel group’s relationship with the federal agency, “we have gone on to do studies that go beyond military requirements – like greenhouse experiments, germination experiments, survival experiments. … Again, this will help not only the military but maybe down the road will help to find out about life cycles and maybe aid in delisting a species. These are the kind of things that I’m not sure other people would be doing. That would be a very good example of the value of having a university involved.”
Next Page: Literature Cited
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