National monuments have a military defense mission, too

In August, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke concluded his review of 27 of America’s national monuments. We do not yet know the outcome of this process, though the recommendations leaked to the media indicate reductions to the boundaries of seven of them. Even so, the secretary has not released his proposal publicly and most certainly, President Trump has yet to act on the recommendations, leaving proponents of public land conservation in limbo.

During this time of uncertainty, we must continue to highlight the important role that national monuments and public lands play for our country — particularly for national defense. National monuments serve as irreplaceable buffers on lands that are critical for military readiness.

{mosads}Sonoran Institute, based in Arizona, recently released a second report analyzing the role public lands in the West play in protecting the military mission. While this study was focused on the California Desert region, the first report, released in 2015, discussed the entire state of Arizona. In both studies, an overlay of military missions with federal lands was used to describe what is common knowledge in the military arena — that the open and undeveloped landscape in the West is well suited for training activities.

Federal lands continue to be subject to a variety of development, including renewable energy, mining and infrastructure projects. More recently, some have suggested turning these lands over to the states. These efforts have potential to jeopardize future military activities that rely on millions of acres of public lands where invisible corridors are carefully placed to allow military training overflights and testing to occur. The military can have confidence that special use airspace and training routes will be more durable and free of encroachment when they occur over protected lands like national monuments.

By way of example, our research identifies current and foreseeable development activities occurring around 29 Palms Marine Base in California that range from large renewable energy projects to increased off-highway vehicle recreation within managed public lands. The accumulation of these impacts, as is evident in the report, occurs in high concentration across the west and south sides of the installation, which leads to reduced biological connectivity and habitat integrity.

Without a more intentional strategy elsewhere around the base, 29 Palms could easily become a biological island, leading to further wildlife management complications and associated impacts to training activities.

This is of particular concern considering the significant challenge within the California Desert region involving efforts to stabilize the Mojave desert tortoise population, a threatened species that has suffered significant declines particularly in the Western Mojave and Colorado Desert sub-regions, which include the California Desert and over 3 million acres of Department of Defense-managed land. This issue is an ongoing concern for military resource managers who have implemented programs to address this decline while ensuring that military activities can occur without significant impairment.

In our research, this example of indirect encroachment is common across military installations and can be best addressed by maintaining habitat connectivity and adequate habitat away from Defense Department facilities to sustain the species.

In the case of Mojave Trails and Sonoran Desert National Monuments, their location adjacent to 29 Palms Marine Base and in proximity to the Barry M. Goldwater Range helps to address these challenges by removing the likelihood for most impacts to occur in key locations around the facilities, and thereby ensuring protected habitat for wildlife and plant species.

This benefit is undervalued by the layperson but is well known and appreciated in the military community. While the Defense Department spends millions of dollars each year to buy buffer lands around other bases, these training areas benefit from “no-cost buffers” that provide an important and irreplaceable service.

In anticipation of a final determination by President Trump, I ask that the administration recognize the often-overlooked benefits that national monuments and other protect lands provide to military training and readiness, among the many other considerations, before moving forward with boundary adjustments or other reductions to the effectiveness and scale of our nation’s protected lands.

Ian Dowdy, AICP is a program director for the non-partisan research-oriented Sonoran Institute based in Tucson, Arizona. He is a certified urban planner who focuses on integrating sustainability with human activity.