Pentagon's battle over land for training heats up
By Andrew Bridges
Associated Press
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Since this sprawling base was carved out of a cattle ranch at the onset of World War II, Marines have stormed an unassuming stretch of beach here countless times to train for battles from Iwo Jima to Nasiriyah, Iraq.
Associated Press
The Marines have subjected Red Beach, as the 1,500-yard piece of Southern California sand is known, to punishing treatment in mock exercises designed to prepare them for combat.
Signs noting the presence of the western snowy plover and California least tern are reminders to Marines of the limits placed on their training by the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws.
Now the Defense Department is doing battle over Red Beach itself, part of a larger war the Pentagon is waging in Congress over the nation's more than 425 military installations.
These range from the 2 million acres of the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to the 870,000 acres of Fort Wainwright in Alaska, and 4,190 acres of Makua Military Reservation on O'ahu.
The Pentagon fears much of that land, originally set aside for its exclusive use, could be snatched away from it by the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws that address everything from porpoises to pollution.
At stake, it argues, is the U.S. military's very ability to train in peace as it fights in war.
At Makua, after a July 22 Army "controlled" burn that got out control and burned half the valley, Earthjustice threatened to file suit, and the Army agreed to formal consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over habitat protection.
To counter the perceived threat of laws including the Superfund and Clean Air acts, the Pentagon is pushing for exemptions for its training areas.
"Use of the terrain is absolutely essential and is at the heart of our training," said John Walsh, a special assistant in the Pentagon office of the deputy undersecretary of defense for readiness. "Those pieces of terrain can't be reserved for the fostering of endangered species."
Environmentalists vehemently oppose the initiative and call it an unwarranted rollback of the nation's major environmental laws. They fear other agencies could follow the Pentagon's lead and seek similar exemptions.
"Essentially, it's an administrative and legislative strategy to exempt them from key environmental laws that every American and every other agency has to comply with," said Susan Holmes, senior legislative representative for the environmental group Earthjustice.
U.S. Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawai'i, said the military in Hawai'i has become much more sensitive to environmental concerns, but he believes the protection laws are "absolutely necessary to ensure long-term consistency with the rest of us in Hawai'i."
Case said he could not accept "wholesale exemptions" being sought to environmental law, and largely because of that, voted against the House defense authorization bill.
"I just thought that was over-reaching," he said.
Base's mission threatened
Advertiser library photo • July 23, 2003
The dispute comes at a time when military installations stand as some of the best, if not last, habitat for rare species.
The military lost control of a "controlled" burn at Makua in July. The fire went on to destroy at least 71 individual endangered plants.
Although much of the land included in the nation's 425 military installations gets hammered by tanks and troops, they also include large buffers that remain pristine and untouched.
If not for the break provided by Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, for example, Los Angeles and San Diego would likely merge into a single megalopolis, stretching 150 miles along the Southern California coast.
More than 300 threatened or endangered species of wildlife can be found today on the 25 million acres set aside for military use, the Pentagon estimates.
Camp Pendleton alone is home to 18 such species. Two, the coastal California gnatcatcher, a bird, and the tidewater goby, a small fish, are found in the skinny stretch of brush and wetlands abutting Red Beach, despite its more than half-century of use.
Base officials fear the presence of those and other species, squeezed onto Camp Pendleton by rampant development beyond its perimeter, could curtail use of 70,000 of the base's 125,000 acres, if the land is designated critical habitat.
"This is ominous. This threatens the ability of this base to operate as a Marine Corps training base," said Stan Norquist, head of the natural resources department at Camp Pendleton.
Environmentalists dispute that and maintain the true figure is closer to 875 acres. Any other designated habitat on the base would be on farm fields or within San Onofre State Park, both of which lie within Camp Pendleton's boundaries.
Risk to readiness disputed
The White House-backed exemptions package, known as the Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative, was introduced last year and contained eight provisions.
Congress passed three of the provisions last year, including a temporary waiver from the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which covers 850 species of birds, and an easing of requirements for land conservation and transfer of surplus property.
This year, the Pentagon reintroduced the remaining five provisions.
As of this month, just one of the five, which would allow for the exemption of some military land from critical habitat provisions of the Endangered Species Act, made it into the Senate version of the 2004 defense authorization bill. The House version also includes Navy-sought exemptions from the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Hashing out the differences is a House-Senate conference committee that is also taking up proposals for tactical nuclear weapons and a buy-American mandate for the military.
The Department of Defense claims the environmental laws, coupled with population growth and development, have significantly restricted its use of land set aside for training and testing, including live-fire exercises. Such encroachment will worsen and could lead to readiness problems unless Congress steps in, Pentagon officials have warned.
However, a 2002 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office failed to uncover any data to quantify the effect of that encroachment on military training and costs.
And former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman, in Senate testimony earlier this year, could not cite a single case in which military training had been held up by environmental laws. Opponents point out that the laws allow for case-by-case exemptions for the military.
"There's no justification for it at all. There is no evidence presented by the military that training has suffered because of environmental laws," said Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity.
Camp Pendleton subsequently undertook its own effort to do so. It now says, for certain exercises involving entire units, it can accomplish just 68 percent of the training tasks required of it.
"No one has ever suggested something is failing and Marines aren't ready, but it's getting harder, harder and harder," Norquist said.
Military plans ineffective?
The House version especially alarms environmentalists. It would exempt the Pentagon from habitat-protection mandates outlined in the Endangered Species Act, if the military substitutes its own plans to ensure the survival of the affected species.
Pentagon officials said their plans are effective. Environmentalists say they are unfunded, rarely implemented and ineffective.
The Senate version differs in that it would require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to review the plans before the Pentagon can implement them.
The House version would also exempt the Pentagon from restrictions that curtail the killing or harming of marine mammals, including dolphins and whales.
Conservation legacy at stake
On land, the military said it has been a good steward to endangered and threatened species. Officials frequently cite one of the rarest mammals found in the United States, the Sonoran pronghorn antelope.
The pronghorn's primary habitat in the United States lies within Arizona's Barry M. Goldwater Range, where pilots train in live-fire exercises.
On average, 7 percent of all scheduled bombing missions are scrubbed because pronghorn have been spotted near targets, said Air Force Col. James Uken, the Goldwater's range management officer; 26 percent are rerouted to secondary targets. The moves ensure the continued survival of the fewer than three dozen antelope that live in the region.
Environmentalists acknowledge the good work the military has done in places, but fear the sought-after exemptions could reverse its conservationist course. They cite examples of where the military has scored poorly on the environment.
The July Makua controlled fire that escaped control destroyed at least 71 individual endangered plants and 150 acres of critical habitat — area essential to species recovery. Four species in the area are found nowhere else.
"Ultimately, what's at stake is the military's legacy of conservation," Patterson said.
Advertiser staff writer William Cole contributed to this report.
