{"id":1114,"date":"2013-05-20T18:54:27","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T18:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/?p=1114"},"modified":"2013-05-20T18:54:27","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T18:54:27","slug":"the-marines-working-hard-to-save-tortoises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/the-marines-working-hard-to-save-tortoises","title":{"rendered":"The Marines Working Hard To Save Tortoises"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check out this great article from the Wall Street Journal about our marines saving the desert tortoises.<\/h2>\n

Such a great article about our Marines saving the Desert Tortoises! This article is from The Wall Street Journal.<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Few, the Proud, the Tortoises: Marines Protect Endangered Species<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif.\u2014U.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.<\/em><\/p>\n

The troops were \u201crunning up the hill and firing at targets,\u201d Mr. Henen said. \u201cSome of the tortoises like the hill also. The Marines don\u2019t want to hurt the tortoise, so they call us and we go in and move it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people who don\u2019t recognize the amount of conservation the Marine Corps does,\u201d said Martin Husung, a natural-resource specialist on the base. \u201cA lot of people think we\u2019re just running over things.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2019t frightened by charging troops.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they get scared, they pee themselves,\u201d 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

The tortoise isn\u2019t the only animal benefiting from the limited hunting, high security and trained biologists on many bases. On the Navy\u2019s San Clemente Island, biologists protect vulnerable loggerhead shrikes from hungry rats by installing metal \u201crat flashings\u201d 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\u2019s sunflower, is doing so well it has been taken off the endangered list.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

At Fort Benning, an Army base near Columbus, Ga., gunfire and explosions regularly set off fires in the pine trees, said John Brent, the base environmental manager. Oddly enough, this is a boon for the red-cockaded woodpecker, a bird on the endangered species list that has made a comeback there.<\/em><\/p>\n

The finicky woodpecker typically lives in longleaf pines at least 60 years old. The tree thrives on forest fires. \u201cIt needs fire to germinate and grow,\u201d Mr. Brent said.<\/em><\/p>\n

Outside the base, civilian agencies have long tried to prevent forest fires, and that ultimately hurts the pine population. Elsewhere, forest lands are disappearing amid rapid development.<\/em><\/p>\n

All of this has the birds flocking to the base, Mr. Brent said. To help welcome the new tenants, Mr. Brent and others have been building bird \u201ccondominiums,\u201d Mr. Brent said. For this they cut a hole about the size of a loaf of bread in an existing tree and slide in a cedar box to accommodate a nest. They can only do this once per tree because these picky birds prefer \u201ccondos, not townhouses,\u201d Mr. Brent said.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a well-kept secret\u201d that biologists are drawn to work on military bases, Mr. Brent said. \u201cThere\u2019s a chance to do terrific work.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

The outlays let biologists survey habitats, tag and track animals, build hatcheries and provide ecological training to thousands of troops.<\/em><\/p>\n

At Fort Irwin, an Army base near Barstow, Calif., Clarence Everly bumped along a dirt trail in a Dodge Ram pickup. The former Airborne Ranger is now the natural and cultural resources manager on base.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHaving been in the Army, it gives you some street cred\u201d dealing with soldiers and the chain of command, he said. \u201cYou\u2019re not just the environmentalist guy trying to prevent them from doing training.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

He drove out to meet a team of biologists from the U.S. Geological Survey on a 10-acre restricted area where lonely Joshua trees shook in 50 mile per hour winds.<\/em><\/p>\n

This \u201cis a great resource,\u201d said Christina Aiello, a USGS scientist and Ph.D. student from Penn State University, trying to yell over the gusts of wind. \u201cBlocking off areas, restricting access, it\u2019s safe and secure and there\u2019s no public access.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She is part of a team doing research on how tortoises interact socially. She said their research is \u201clike Facebook<\/a>\u201d as they track friend circles in the tortoise group.<\/em><\/p>\n

Back at Twentynine Palms, Ken Nagy, a professor emeritus in biology from UCLA studying the reproductive habits of the reptiles, held a baby tortoise in one hand, its shell still soft.<\/em><\/p>\n

They are like \u201cwalking ravioli\u201d to predators, he said. A fenced-off section of the base covered by netting helps overcome the high mortality rate for young tortoises in the wild. Mr. Nagy\u2019s program helps protect juveniles from birds and allows for research in a natural habitat.<\/em><\/p>\n

Other parts of the military\u2019s domain aren\u2019t exactly natural but still offer the animals military-style protection.<\/em><\/p>\n

On Fort Irwin, Mr. Everly peered through the window of his pickup at some targets in the distance\u2014home to a surprisingly large tortoise population. \u201cIn essence, the live-fire ranges are protection for the tortoises,\u201d he said, looking at a patch of ground where bullets often rain down but rarely hit the burrowing reptile. \u201cNobody goes out there.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Check out the entire article here: http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424127887323798104578452941180687984.html?mod=wsj_valettop_email<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check out this great article from the Wall Street Journal about our marines saving the desert tortoises. Such a great article about our Marines saving the Desert Tortoises! This article is from The Wall Street Journal. The Few, the Proud, the Tortoises: Marines Protect Endangered Species TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif.\u2014U.S. Marines are taught to overcome obstacles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,3,10,5],"tags":[661,19,662,24,25,38,20,660,663],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1116,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions\/1116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleartheair.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}