Proceedings from the Southwest Region Threatened, Endangered, and At-Risk Species Workshop Held in Tucson, Arizona on October 22-25, 2007
Abstract
The Department of Defense (DoD) is responsible for the management of nearly 30 million acres of land as well as substantial waters and air space used for training Military Service personnel and testing their equipment. In the southwestern United States, the military manages vast areas of land and resources within its installations boundaries. These installations are critical for military training and testing, provide essential habitat for numerous threatened, endangered, and at-risk species (TER-S), and yet occur in areas with significant concentrations of urban, agricultural, mining, and recreational use that have impacted historic amounts and conditions of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems on which TER-S depend. To facilitate the recovery of TER-S and to mitigate against the need for new listings, increased attention must be given to TER-S management from both an ecosystem and cross-boundary perspective. The specific objectives for the Southwest Region TER-S Workshop were to (1) assess TER-S management needs within a regional context, with an emphasis on system-level and crossboundary approaches; (2) assess these approaches for their potential to keep common species common while recovering or enhancing TER-S populations; (3) assess current understanding of the ecology of arid and semiarid ecosystems in terms of understanding the dynamics of highly variable and difficult to predict environments that are also subject to periodic long-term drought and how that does or should affect management approaches; (4) examine the current state of the practice within DoD for such holistic approaches; (5) identify gaps in knowledge, technology, management, and partnerships that, if addressed, could improve implementation of system-level and cross-boundary approaches; and (6) prioritize DoD investment opportunities to address these gaps.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA606999