Forestry program supports military, environmental missions

  • Published
  • By Jennifer Schneider
  • AFCEC Public Affairs
JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas --  It may seem like a contradiction in terms; the very landscape providing the training grounds for troops preparing for war can oftentimes serve as a refuge for plants and wildlife faced with rapidly expanding urban development.

The Air Force forestry program oversees more than 570,000 acres to help sustain the military's mission by supporting flight operations and military training exercises. Maintaining the "mission scape" requires a healthy ecosystem, which, in turn, leads to several environmental benefits.

"We manage the forests in a way that the mission operators require," said Kevin Porteck, biological scientist and Air Force natural resources subject matter expert at the Air Force Civil Engineer Center. "Healthy forests are more resistant to wildfires and degradation from mission activities. Maintaining the health of these forests leads to healthy ecosystems that support biodiversity."

As part of the Air Force's forestry program, there are a number of management activities such as tree-thinning, pruning and control of undesirable vegetation, necessary to create and sustain forest health.  Foresters are also responsible for reforestation efforts and protecting trees from fire, insects and disease.

At the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, proactive forest management has helped stave off a potentially devastating mountain pine beetle epidemic, which ravaged almost four million acres across the state. Currently, trees are under attack by a secondary beetle, known as the Ips beetle, which has proliferated due to drought conditions.

To help prevent infestation, the team has taken several actions including pruning and removing parasitic dwarf mistletoe plants to help prevent stress on trees already weakened by prolonged drought.

"We've been pruning approximately 2,000 to 4,000 trees per year in areas that have smaller amounts of mistletoe that's manageable," said Diane Strohm, natural resource manager at the Academy. "This is definitely one of the primary stressors in our trees, besides drought, that will encourage beetles to attack and beetle populations to proliferate." 

The forest thinning program also enhances tree vigor and reduces the risk of widespread losses to bark beetles, she added.

Trees that do succumb to beetle attack are identified and promptly removed. Identifying infested trees across the Academy's nearly 13,000 acres can be a painstaking task. To assist, Strohm and her team are helping to develop a senior cadet-level course to use aerial reconnaissance and spectrometry to find trees that are infested and going "off color," so they can be promptly removed.

Administering prescribed, or controlled, burns is another way to maintain forest health and protect mission activities at several installations across the Air Force. Fire suppression over the years can cause a steady deterioration of ecosystem health as many plant and animal species require periodic fires to survive and thrive. 

"The pine-bearing ecosystem has a lot of fire-dependent species," said Mark Stevenson, forester at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. "When land is protected from fire, it tends to grow up too thick and becomes a stagnant ecosystem. With the burns we conduct here, we're able to maintain a very active ecosystem."

JB-MDL conducts prescribed burns on as many as 6,000 acres each year, producing the type of open habitat preferred by the Bald Eagle population in the area.

Prescribed fires also help prevent the type of catastrophic damage that can occur when forest fuels build up due to fire suppression, Strohm said.

While conducting forest management activities incurs costs for salaries and other operation and maintenance costs, the forestry program has been able to remain self-sufficient through the harvesting and sale of wood products resulting from these activities.

In fiscal 2014, forest management activities across the Air Force yielded over $142,000 in net profits after paying operations and maintenance costs, with almost $105,000 being distributed to the counties or parishes where the installations are located for the benefit of schools and roads.

"Forests are valuable natural resources," Porteck said.  "They support energy conservation, reduce storm-water runoff, control erosion and remove pollution, provide habitat for plants and animals, and provide numerous other benefits.   Our efforts help support the Air Force's military mission and preserve these resources for future generations, all at no cost to taxpayers."