The Army’s proposal to move 1,000 desert tortoises has been placed on hold by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, amid concerns over the Army’s previous plan that resulted in the death of 252 out of 600 tortoises.

The Center for Biological Diversity announced that a plan by the Army to move over 1,000 federally and state-listed threatened desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) from their Fort Irwin habitat to Bureau of Land Management lands has successfully been halted.

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The Army knows that extensive alternative energy installations are the best way to ensure continuous, reliable electricity production. That’s why the military organization is building the Department of Defense’s largest ever solar project at the Fort Irwin Base in California’s Mojave Desert.

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Coupled with economics, dwindling natural resources, and the dangers of transporting fuel in war zones (half of all US casualties in Iraq are from attacks on fuel carrying convoys), the military plans to spend economic stimulus money on alternative fuels and energy conservation.

Traditionally, the Department of Defense has cared little about saving money. The recent shift towards alternative fuels as a military priority is an effort to reduce casualties rather than save natural resources or funds. “The honest-to-God truth, the most compelling reason to do it is it saves lives,” said Brigadier General Steven Anderson, director of operations and logistics for the Army.  Saving money, preserving dwindling natural resources and lessening U.S. dependence on foreign sources are lesser priorities of the alternative fuels and energy conservation initiatives.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars have set the record for the most fuel consumption of any war in US history.  Since the War on Terror began in 2001, the amount of oil consumption has increased from 50 million gallons to 500 million gallons a year at bases.  Using Economic Stimulus Package money, the Pentagon has several alternative fuels and energy saving projects planned.

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Scientists at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg are scrambling to stop two types of bats that live on the base from becoming endangered.

But it’s not entirely out of the goodness of their hearts — they admit that they do not want to deal with the hassle of having a listed endangered species in their midst. They already have to work around two endangered animals and three plant species on the base, and they don’t want to add two more.

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American Rheinmetall Munitions announced this week that their Mk281 “green ammunition” will start to be introduced at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in California.

From the press release:

Mk281 does not contain toxic chemicals or energetic materials, which aligns it with the Department of Defense (DoD) and Environmental Protection Agency’s joint mission to solve Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) issues. The Army’s current 40 mm training cartridge, M918, is a 1970’s pyrotechnic design that contains heavy metals in the fuze and potassium perchlorate in the flash/bang payload. It is due to phase out in favor of newer munitions when the U.S. industrial base is ready.

No matter what your stance on war, this is a smart idea, since soldiers go through up to 10 million rounds a year in training. The clean-up costs alone are over $500 million.

Often animals will show signals of disaster long before the human population is affected, leading researchers to seek widespread information of wildlife fatalities for both the safety of people and other animals.

While data of wildlife fatalities or infection exists in different agencies across the US, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Fort Johnson are working on a pilot program to centralize the data to form an Environmental Surveillance Network in the South Carolina.

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• Sixteen Army installations with comprehensive Installation Sustainability Plans in place.
• 78% (301) of FY07 ArmyMilitary Construction projects designed to at least U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED® new construction certification standards.
• 100% (161) installations with an Environmental Management System (EMS) in place with 31% in conformance to ISO14001
• 8.4% reduction in facility energy useintensity (KBtu/gross square foot/per year, since FY03)

Challenges still exist, of course. Among them:

• 35% increase in Hazardous Waste (HW) generation as reported for CY03 to CY06 and an 8% increase in pounds HWgenerated per $1000 net Army cost of operations.
• 11% increase in absolute Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) releases as reported for CY03 to CY06, but a 13% decrease in pounds TRI released per $1000 net Army cost of operations.

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We predicted that the translocation of tortoises from Fort Irwin’s expansion would be disastrous, and unfortunately, we were proven right. The loss of so many tortoises is certainly not helping this threatened population. The Army must minimize the death rate. If relocation really is necessary, it needs to be done much more carefully.

Image: USGS

Via: World-Wire

Despite its recent foray into sustainable practices, the United States Army isn’t known as an environmental leader. Now the Army is trying to prove its greenness with the world’s strongest solar array. Yesterday, the Army announced that it plans to construct a 500 MW solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert at Fort Irwin. Currently, the United States’ largest solar array is a 15 MW plant at Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas.

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The Army had begun pushing for environmental sustainability in all of their bases, starting with Fort Bragg in North Carolina. And they’re thinking it through as well; not only are they thinking about the current footprint (I’m not going to say it), they’re thinking about the future as well. Since 2001, each village set up within Fort Bragg for training purposes has been made up of shipping containers, reducing the cost from $400,000 to $25,000, and keeping the shipping containers out of the solid waste stream.

But the goal is not solely to save money, but also lives as well.

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