The year 1995 marked a milestone in the military’s efforts to develop an overall strategy for managing biodiversity on military lands. At the direction of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Environmental Security), a national dialogue was held under the auspices of the non-profit Keystone Center, which brought DoD officials together with representatives of other government agencies and nongovernmental interests. The purpose of this dialogue was to develop policy guidance for enhancing and protecting biodiversity on DoD lands in a way that is integrated with the military mission.
The Keystone dialogue revealed strong support by DoD for biodiversity conservation on military lands and affirmed that conservation of the department’s exceptional natural heritage is important to the military for various reasons (Box 1.1). The report that emerged from that dialogue contained suggestions for clarifying and improving military policies and programs, and for integrating mission planning and biodiversity conservation (Keystone Center 1996). One specific recommendation was to develop a biodiversity conservation handbook that could assist installation natural resource management staff and mission leaders. In response, DoD commissioned the first edition of this guide, Conserving Biodiversity on Military Lands: A Handbook for Natural Resource Managers (Leslie et al. 1996). A central element of that first edition was the creation of a “model process” for putting the theory of ecosystem management into a practical framework for use at the installation level.
Next Page: Box 1.1: Importance of Biodiversity Conservation for the Military Mission
Author
Bruce Stein, Ph.D., Chief Scientist and Associate Vice President
National Wildlife Federation
A Shift Toward Ecosystem Management and Biodiversity Conservation Sections
A Shift Toward Ecosystem Management and Biodiversity Conservation
Box 1.1: Importance of Biodiversity Conservation for the Military Mission