The U.S. Army routinely has destroyed hundreds of trees during training exercises at Piñon Canyon, according to documents obtained by environmentalists in their battle to prevent the expansion of the southeastern Colorado maneuver site.
But the military also preserves the rugged terrain, replanting native grasses and plants after exercises and acting as stewards of the landscape, defenders say.
“While we do damage – and we have to; we’re driving 73-ton tanks on fragile land – we have to maintain it, meaning conserve it, meaning sustain it for the next generation of soldiers,” said Tom Warren, the director of environment, energy and natural resources for Fort Carson.
The Army wants to add 400,000 acres to the 235,000-acre Piñon Canyon site, a proposal that has drawn fire from local ranchers and environmentalists.
Critics contend that the expansion isn’t necessary, couldn’t be accomplished without condemning generations- old ranches and would open up a huge swath of the Eastern Plains to severe environmental impacts that could spawn a new Dust Bowl.
“It’s a needless and senseless destruction,” said Lon Robertson, president of the anti-expansion group Not 1 More Acre.
Both the House and Senate have passed amendments to a military appropriations bill that would block the Army from spending money next year on the expansion, including an environmental study. The measure will now be reviewed in a conference committee.
Over the past 22 years, soldiers in tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles have carved out 200-foot-wide paths in the sagebrush and piñon-juniper forests, damaged archaeological sites and scared wildlife, according to hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the nonprofit group under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
“That’s the nature of warfare. They’re not there to take care of the property. They’re there to practice,” Robertson said. “But everybody should be asking the question: Why are we even looking at this (expansion), considering they’ve already torn things up?”
The Army contends that increased territory will allow for larger-scale, more realistic training and will further enable efforts to preserve the land by allowing for greater recovery times for impacted areas.
Warren insists that the land inside the boundaries at the maneuver site remains in better shape than some overgrazed ranches outside since it was adopted in 1983.
“The accomplishment of our mission can cause some damage,” he said. “Is that damage irrevocable or irretrievable from an environmental-impact perspective? My answer to you would be no, not if it’s managed appropriately.”
He said the Army spent the first two years at the property merely rehabilitating the damaged vegetation and building 416 erosion-control structures, identifying sensitive areas and cultural resources, such as archaeological sites, and devising plans for maneuvers that included land-use rotation.
In his reports after each month-long maneuver period, Warren pulled no punches.
“Environmental impacts … were not totally unanticipated. However, they were not anticipated to occur at the evidence extremes,” he wrote in one of his first reports, dating to 1985.
Warren found that tank operators had created wide boulevards to avoid driving in the dust behind others, plowed through fences into protected areas and crossed erosion-susceptible arroyos.
In many maneuvers, vehicles knocked down hundreds of trees – including 300-year-old junipers – and in one early set of exercises, tanks had intruded into 58 of 64 off-limits cultural sites containing historic homesteads and Indian artifacts, destroying some.
Problems have been minimized in recent years, Warren said, as the Army implemented improved educational efforts and he began charging unit commanders to pay for unnecessary damages.
The nature photography team of Bob Rozinski and Wendy Shattil are among those enchanted with the wildlife-rich Piñon Canyon area, which includes shortgrass prairies and deeply creased canyons.
Rozinski worries that many of the natural and archaeological treasures there could be lost before anyone even knows they exist, particularly if the Army expands its training site.
“When we look at it from a botanical, biological standpoint, it’s like a playhouse,” he said. “You’re not really sure what you’re going to find down there. And that’s what’s being lost.”
Much of the area, he notes, is privately owned and has been off-limits to outsiders for generations. As a result, locals claim very close ties to the land and tend to be defensive about potential changes.
Tom Dougherty, a senior adviser to the president and chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation, said Army officials have made land conservation an integral part of their responsibilities.
“You can go out there six months after an exercise … and you can hardly tell those tanks have been there,” Dougherty said. “I know this makes me sound like I really like the Army. I really don’t. It would be a lot easier for me to say, ‘Yeah, these guys trashed it,’ like everybody else. But I can’t really say that.”
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or at slipsher@denverpost.com.
