The Army Compatible Use Buffer program, long considered one of the most effective programs and models for balancing environmental stewardship and vital training, is an important tool across the U.S. Army.
At White Sands Missile Range, Brian Knight, chief of the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division, has won acclaim for effective implementation of an ACUB program as part of a series of steps to establish and protect the necessary buffers between training grounds and off-site development. Knight is credited with managing the complex relationships, varied jurisdictions, private and public entities that come with sustaining the vital training at WSMR and providing top-quality environmental stewardship.
“As leader at WSMR, Brian Knight has strengthened military readiness, long-term mission sustainability and resilience. He planned and executed conservation easements in areas surrounding WSMR that are most vulnerable to encroachment from incompatible development,” said Garrison Commander Col. David A. Mitchell. “It takes a strong leader to lead the massive program at WSMR, to create the partnerships and the win-win relationships. He’s done a remarkable job.”
WSMR encompasses 2.2 million-acres and 8,500 miles of DoD restricted airspace and military training routes, across jurisdictions of five New Mexico counties. WSMR is the DoD largest research, development, test, and evaluation range. WSMR hosts the military’s remote pilot aircraft training, 70% of the F-22 and F-16 pilot training and most training for nearby Holloman Air Force Base.
Close management is required to preserve the necessary training environment both within the installation and on adjacent lands. Conservation easements with landowners prevented incompatible development such as energy transmission lines, wind turbines, radio frequency, and urban development -- all potential challenges to maintaining existing aerial approaches into WSMR on the northern and western boundaries.
Tall structures such as windmills and energy distribution lines, for example, must be limited because those structures eliminate the capability for low-altitude flights into the installation and can emit radio frequencies that disrupt military radar systems.
ACUB is a tool to protect the access and availability of lands and the capabilities that those lands provide. Installations collaborate with partners to identify mutual land conservation objectives. The partners purchase easements or fee-simple property acquisitions from willing landowners within areas determined to be a priority for protection. The partner, not the Army or even DoD, holds the deeded interest in the property.
Another tool Knight is credited with effectively implementing at WSMR is the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration program, of which ACUB is a component. REPI is designed to cultivate projects that conserve lands at a greater scale, test promising means to finance land protection and harness the creativity of the private sector and market-base approaches above and beyond each installations’ ACUB program
“Partnerships with private conservation groups are a win-win because there is cost sharing to acquiring easements or other interests in land that promote compatible land use and natural habitat conservation off an installation,” said Mitchell.
Knight led efforts to garner more than $27 million in funding support for ACUB and REPI programs at WSMR and won $5.1 through a REPI competitive grant process.
At WSMR under Knight’s leadership, a total of 328,409 acres in Fiscal Years 2021 and 2022 were protected, including the 315,709-acre conservation easement with the Armendaris Ranch, the largest conservation easement in ACUB and REPI history, which closed in March 2022. The total acres protected with conservation easements around WSMR increased to 361,279 total acres by the end of FY22.
A key component of an effective ACUB is the creation of a Joint Land Use Study, which is a planning process that works to help community land use planners better understand and incorporate military needs into their land development standards and processes. The goal of the JLUS is to better understand and incorporate military needs and impacts into local planning programs and is another means to address incompatible development around the installation.
Knight was a leader and visionary in building relationships with local area communities to formulate a JLUS, and worked closely with local city municipalities, federal agencies, state and county governments and congressional staff who represent the areas surrounding WSMR.
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