Set amidst the sandhills of North Carolina, Fort Bragg is one of the largest and busiest military installations in the world. The base, which is the home of the Army’s airborne and special operations forces, trains more soldiers each year than any other military installation. The base plays a crucial role in enabling rapid deployments around the world, and soldiers from its 82nd Airborne Division must be ready to fight anyplace on the globe within eighteen hours. Military readiness is dependent on training, and training is a perishable commodity. As a result, Fort Bragg hosts extensive ground and aerial training exercises, and up to one hundred thousand parachutes a year blossom in the skies above the base. The success of these training maneuvers in meeting the military mission depends on the availability of adequate land and realistic fighting conditions.
Sharing the base’s airspace and terrain with these parachutists are some of the last remaining red-cockaded woodpeckers (Dryobates borealis), a federally protected endangered species. Efforts to protect this seven-inch tall, black and white-striped woodpecker had the potential for dramatically restricting the training opportunities at the base with consequences for the installation’s capacity for maintaining military readiness. Instead, by taking an innovative approach to managing the base’s natural ecosystems and working across boundaries—geographic and institutional—Fort Bragg not only is helping ensure the survival and recovery of this endangered bird, but also is enhancing the availability of realistic training for the nation’s troops. And in doing so, those involved helped forge a new generation of approaches for conserving biodiversity on military lands.
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Author
Bruce Stein, Ph.D., Chief Scientist and Associate Vice President
National Wildlife Federation
Balancing Mission and Biodiversity at Fort Bragg Sections
Balancing Mission and Biodiversity at Fort Bragg
Longleaf Pine: A Declining Ecosystem