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Teamwork across units central to successful land management at busiest National Guard training center

By Thomas Milligan (US Army Environmental Command)June 29, 2023

The Regal Fritillary butterfly, a Pennsylvania species of concern, calls Fort Indiantown Gap home.
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Range and Training Land Assessment personnel conduct habitat assessment for line-of-sight concerns.
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Environmental employees plant nectar plants for the propagation of the Regal Fritillary butterfly on Fort Indiantown Gap training lands in Pennsylvania.
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(Photo Credit: US Army photo by Erika McKinney) VIEW ORIGINAL
Fort Indiantown Gap's Land Rehabilitation and Maintenance team work ditching next to a trail to allow better trail drainage to help reduce potholes and rutting.
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(Photo Credit: US Army photo by Chad Gladhill) VIEW ORIGINAL
Fort Indiantown Gap's Land Rehabilitation and Maintenance staff add armoring to a ditch to help reduce erosion and sedimentation into local streams.
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(Photo Credit: US Army photo by Chad Gladhill) VIEW ORIGINAL
Range and Training Land Assessment personnel conduct woody vegetation encroachment and maneuver damage assessment.
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As the leader of training land management at the busiest National Guard training center in the nation, Dave Walton and his team are constantly having to deal with seemingly conflicting goals as well as many moving parts.

Walton said the way they do that at Fort Indiantown Gap National Guard Training Center is to look at the challenges of balancing land management for training and habitat preservation for endangered species not as separate functions, but part of a larger team effort.

“We all have the idea that our mission here is to train soldiers. We have a set of things that we have to do to make that happen. The environmental team has a set of interwoven things that they have to do to make it happen,” Walton, the Integrated Training Area Management Coordinator at the installation, said. “It just makes sense to do that together.”

Another key to the installation’s ability to effectively maintain and manage land for the 125,000-plus soldiers who train there annually, is to proactively address potential issues rather than wait to repair damaged terrain and habitat.

“Instead of filling gullies with soil or stone to avoid erosion, we work to prevent the forming of the gullies in the first place. Maintenance is cheaper than repair,” he said. “So instead of investing a lot of money in fixing things, we use planning and take the time to build things to be sustainable – that supports the training mission and helps protect habitat. We’re interested in protecting the land to keep it viable.”

Walton said this approach is the standard at training installations now but was not always the case in the past and that during his 20-plus years of working with Army installations, there’s been significantly more awareness and understanding of the need for good land stewardship.

“In 1988 when I was commissioned, I was driving around some of the training areas, and was seeing a lot of erosion, bare earth and thought ‘this could pretty soon become a waste,’ “ he said. “Back in the early 1990s, programs to save the environment, and an increased interest in protecting the land to keep it viable really got going.”

Fort Indiantown Gap National Guard Training Center has more than 10,000 acres of training land and includes 48 different types of range/training areas. The Pennsylvania installation is heavily used by units across the nation for their vital training missions.

Walton, who began working in land management after his Army service, started his second stint at the training center in 2005 in a geographic information systems role. He now serves as the Integrated Training Area Management coordinator and said moving up the ranks in the unit has helped him understand the issues at play.

“My longevity here really helps. People are always coming here asking me questions – I know a lot about why we do things the way we do, where we do it, and what we do,” he said. “I already know what’s been done, so that really helps as we look to continue to meet our mission.”

He also said that creating and maintaining good relationships across units is an irreplaceable part of a successful land and natural resource management effort.

“It is very, very helpful to establish a good working relationship and an amicable relationship with the environmental office, to demonstrate that we’re not trying to get away with anything, and want to collaborate,” he said. “For each side to have a better understanding of what we are trying to do, and what they are trying to do -- that is very important.”

One project that Walton points to is the work to preserve habitat for the Regal Fritillary butterfly. One key to the butterfly’s survival is preservation of a specific violet that is a vital food supply for the butterfly’s caterpillar stage. Walton said that disruption of soil is necessary for the violets to grow, so training activities play a big part of creating the necessary conditions for the butterfly life cycle to be preserved and supported.

Walton said through planning and management of timing, the teams can use the soil disruption that comes with training to bolster that available habitat.

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