U.S. Marines are taught to overcome obstacles with a minimum of help. But when some Marines prepared to charge a hill in a training exercise here a few months ago, they were forced to halt and radio the one man who could help them advance: Brian Henen, turtle expert.
The troops were “running up the hill and
firing at targets,” Mr. Henen said. “Some of the tortoises like the
hill also. The Marines don’t want to hurt the tortoise, so they call us
and we go in and move it.”
Mr. Henen, who has a doctorate in
biology, is part of a little-known army of biologists and other
scientists who manage the Mojave desert tortoise and about 420 other
threatened and endangered species on about 28 million acres of federally
managed military land.
“There’s a lot of people who don’t
recognize the amount of conservation the Marine Corps does,” said Martin
Husung, a natural-resource specialist on the base. “A lot of people
think we’re just running over things.”
Instead, Mr. Henen often hustles out to
remote parts of the Mojave Desert to make sure the threatened desert
tortoise, which can weigh 10 pounds and live to be more than 50 years
old, isn’t frightened by charging troops.
“When they get scared, they pee
themselves,” Mr. Henen said, referring to the tortoises. Since tortoises
can go two years between drinks of water, an unplanned micturition can
cause dehydration and even death. So Mr. Henen sometimes demonstrates to
troops how he soaks the reptiles in a pool until they drink enough
water to plod on with their lives.
The tortoise isn’t the only animal
benefiting from the limited hunting, high security and trained
biologists on many bases. On the Navy’s San Clemente Island, biologists
protect vulnerable loggerhead shrikes from hungry rats by installing
metal “rat flashings” at the base of trees the birds nest in. In Texas,
the Army creates protective nesting environments for endangered
golden-cheeked warblers to fend off incursions by brown-headed cowbirds.
And at Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee, the once-endangered
Helianthus eggertii, or Eggert’s sunflower, is doing so well it has been
taken off the endangered list.
Congress ordered the Defense Department
to protect the flora and fauna on its lands under the 1960 Sikes Act.
Today, the military works with agencies like the Fish and Wildlife
Service, a bureau of the Interior Department, to search for and protect
animals, plants and archaeological sites on its bases...
Last year, the Department of Defense spent nearly $70 million on
threatened and endangered species management and conservation, including
$16.5 million on the red-cockaded woodpecker and just under $6 million
on the desert tortoise.
I see that I and a desert tortoise have something in common. After all, if a bunch of marines were firing their weapons and running in my direction I'm sure I'd suffer "unplanned micturition" myself.
That highlighting of the $70 million was by me, not the author.
That highlighting of the $70 million was by me, not the author.
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