Tortoise Versus Tank

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 4, 2000 | by Steve Miller

An endangered species whose habitat extends from Utah to Mexico has halted Army war training at a military base in California -- and threatens national security, say critics.

What may be one of the most formidable threats to national security today has a craggy face, scaly arms and chomps on grass. Soldiers on the Fort Irwin training center's battlefield are instructed to drop their weapons and call a commander when the 12-inch-round desert tortoise -- listed by federal environmentalists as threatened -- crawls out of its burrow and onto this 1,000-square-mile compound at the edge of the Mojave Desert.

"When the desert tortoise is spotted, it brings things to a screeching halt," says W.M. "Mickey" Quillman of the Army's environmental division at Fort Irwin. War games, marches and drills all fall under the thunder of the tortoise.

For 15 years this benign creature has thwarted the Army's effort to expand the reservation, which lies about an hour from the nearest town of Barstow, Calif. The expansion plans, which would allow the Army to use its constantly evolving technology, encompass the sandy front yard of tortoise.

"National security is a factor here," says Brig. Gen. James D. Thurman, commanding officer at Fort Irwin: "We cannot afford to get our training wrong. If we can't train the way we're going to fight, well, you sure don't want to find out you forgot something during battle."

Since 1985, when the Army realized that its technology had more range than its training grounds, there have been studies, closed-door meetings and acrimonious murmuring from both environmentalists and the military. The Army says it accidentally has killed an average of four tortoises a year for the last 10 years.

"The Army knows more about that tortoise than anybody else," says John Gifford, program manager of the land-acquisition program at Fort Irwin. "We spend a lot of money on that tortoise; we're a friend of the tortoise."

Environmentalists see such claims as hypocritical. "Well, let's destroy 15 to 20 percent of its habitat and call ourselves its friend," says Michael Connor of the Desert Tortoise Preserve Committee, a group dedicated to buying land for the species. Connor charges that the Army has co-opted the land-acquisition process by not holding public hearings. He also disputes the military's commitment to preserving the tortoise. Were the tortoise to go away, "I'm sure that would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people," Connor says.

The idea that 642,730 acres is woefully inadequate for war games rankles environmentalists. Procuring $19 million in governmental funds to expand an additional 153,000 acres, as the Army did last year, incites further ire.

"Their reasons for expansion change seasonally," says Elden Hughes, chairman of the Sierra Club's California/Nevada committee. "First they tell us their guns shoot farther. Then they tell us they have more armored vehicles."

While the Mojave is a harsh environment -- the average temperature is 111 roasting degrees -- it encompasses some of the most pristine desert in the world, a 35-million-acre sanctuary where purple mesas stand watch over the desert floor. And tortoises, whose numbers are estimated at between 93,000 and several hundred thousand, don't mind the heat.

Neither do soldiers -- after a fashion. Fort Irwin was designated in 1981 as the nation's largest training facility of its kind, and soldiers from all over fly in during the year to engage in the most realistic battle training available. "This is where you come when you are ready to get the best battle training because it can most replicate the real thing," says Maj. Rob Ali, a public-affairs officer at the center. "People come here, train under combat conditions for two weeks, then end up coming back later for more."

About 359,000 acres of the training center is usable for maneuvers. Dry lake beds and mountain ranges are unnavigable, and 22,000 acres at the south end already are off limits because of the tortoise. The rest is a commander's playground. Operation Desert Storm was won because of Fort Irwin and its massive battle theater, Gen. Thurman says.

To that, Hughes of the Sierra Club responds: "Fort Irwin is fighting a war that it already won."

The battle at Fort Irwin illustrates the quandary of peacetime America: Bigger guns are good, military strategists say, while those who live near the training centers and outposts join hands with environmentalists in pointing to prosperity and hoping that weapons soon won't be needed. In fact, the dearth of training grounds may be the military's biggest problem right now.

"There are several reasons for this," says retired Army Col. Hal Fuller, who was stationed for some of his career at Fort Irwin. "There is a lack of knowledge on the part of the public, where they say, `You already have enough land; why do you need more?'" But the environmentalists, he concedes, have a point. "They feel the land is not compatible with tank maneuvering, and they're right to an extent."