Three 4th Fighter Wing F-15E Strike Eagles fly over forests and farmland during a training mission. The 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina hosted exercise Razor Talon to provide Air Force and Navy units on the East Coast an opportunity to participate in a low cost training exercise. The Sentinel Landscapes Partnership between DoD, USDA, and DOI works to establish and implement a coordinated and comprehensive strategy within a defined landscape to promote compatible land use around military bases, coordinate the delivery of Federal programs to landowners, and encourage State, Local, and NGO/private participation. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Eric Harris/Released)
Both state and federal partners share a desire to conserve gopher tortoise populations and habitat in order to prevent regulatory constraints and carry out their missions to the best of their ability, be it training missions on military installations or forest management on U.S. Forest Service lands. The gopher tortoise is listed as threatened in the western portion of its range, while it’s a candidate species for possible federal listing in the eastern portion of the range.
Critical efforts to restore fire-dependent ecosystems such as the longleaf pine ecosystem and its many associated species like red-cockaded woodpecker cannot be successful without additional prescribed burning, especially on private lands.
One of three wind turbines at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming. This is one of the original, smaller wind turbines. They face the wind coming across the high plains and push against the clouds, in the distance, that later dropped a few inches of snow on the base and surrounding city of Cheyenne on April 6, 2010. A larger wind turbine was completed and online early in 2009 and is rated at 2 mega watts of electrical energy that goes directly into the base power grid. This and another two produces a combined output of 1.3MW. From most points on the base the wind turbines can be seen. (U.S. Air Force photo/Lance Cheung)
In partnership with MCAS Beaufort and the state of South Carolina, Marines volunteered to assist installation staff construct a living shoreline with oyster shell and bamboo stakes donated by the state government at the station’s Laurel Bay Boat Ramp.
The Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS) is a unique six-state partnership comprised of state and federal agencies that promotes collaboration in making resource-use decisions supporting national defense, conservation of natural resources, and sustainable working lands and communities in the Southeast US. SERPPAS serves as a forum to build effective working relationships between diverse partners, identify overlapping interests and implement mutually beneficial actions that support the mission of all the partners. Through a strategic planning process, SERPPAS has identified specific focus areas and strategic objectives that will protect the military mission, while at the same time promote conservation of key habitats and species, sustain rural economies and industries, and create better coordination across agency, state and governance boundaries.
At the 2021 SERPPAS Principals Meeting, the SERPPAS Principals endorsed the proposal to promote coastal resilience and regional adaptation through the creation of a voluntary and non-regulatory regional salt marsh conservation initiative to protect current and future salt marsh habitat in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Northeastern Florida. The goal of this initiative is to see the salt marshes and their migration corridors conserved and protected into the future so that the great salt marsh along the South Atlantic seaboard can continue to stand guard and provide its many ecosystem, economic and resilience benefits to the SERPPAS partners and beyond. The launch of the initiative can be found here: Military and Environmentalists Align to Protect Key Coastal Salt Marsh - Scientific American
