Fort Bragg, Home of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, Established (1918)

You might not expect the establishment of a military base to receive attention on a conservation history calendar.  For two reasons, however, one specific and one general, Fort Bragg serves as a great reminder of the importance of military lands to conservation.

Fort Bragg was established on September 4, 1918, as an ideal training and testing location for artillery warfare.  Located in rural southeastern North Carolina, the army base covered a huge area—160,000 acres—but had good railroad access.  Camp Bragg, as it was known then, came on line a little late to help in World War I, but it has proved its value since then as a premier training site.  It is one of the largest military facilities in the world, with a $1.2 billion budget, 250,000 people living on or near the base and a local economic impact of about $10 billion annually.

Fort Bragg is also a unique environmental site—the first reason why it deserves conservation attention.  The longleaf pine ecosystem once covered most of the southeastern U.S. coastal plain, but the majority has been replaced by farming, commercial pine plantations and development.  But not Fort Bragg.  The base contains one of the largest contiguous longleaf pine regions left in the country, just about half of the base’s total area.  The park-like environment, with widely spaced tall, old trees and a richly diverse covering of ground vegetation, is maintained naturally by fire.  Whereas fire has been controlled in surrounding areas for a century, small fires have always burned on Fort Bragg—shooting artillery around can make that happen!

Consequently, Fort Bragg has remained an ideal longleaf pine ecosystem.  And one particular species really likes it there—the Red-cockaded Woodpecker (with the nickname “RCW”).  As longleaf pine declined, so did populations of RCWs, that require large old longleaf pine trees as sites for their nesting cavities.  The RCW was listed as an endangered species in 1968.

In 1990, a showdown occurred between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, responsible for rebuilding RCW populations, and the U.S. Army, responsible for maintaining military readiness, when the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a “jeopardy opinion” challenging Fort Bragg’s activities.  Could RCWs and training Fort Bragg co-exist, or did one need to be sacrificed for the other?  Fortunately, the two federal branches came together for the benefit of both.