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One way to understand military-to-wildlife transitions is through the framework of Risk Society offered by sociologist Ulrich Beck. Beck outlines the risks assumed by aging industrial societies and how these extend both over time and across space to impact nature and society. This chapter describes how military-to-wildlife land use changes fit the terms of risk society, and how these risks pose challenges to the environmental gains that seem to come from such transitions. It also examines how wildlife refuges created from military lands struggle to fit within usual categories of public lands.

Since the 1980s, a series of military base closures in the United States has generated opportunities for new kinds of land use across vast areas of land. Many of these sites are now managed as national wildlife refuges, dedicated to new purposes of habitat and wildlife conservation. These changes create opportunities for land managers and environmental protection, but can also obscure damage created by military uses and erase meaningful histories from some of these lands. The chapter evaluates the tensions, challenges, and opportunities that come with military-to-wildlife transitions, and highlights examples at sites in Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, and other locations where these changes are occurring.

Since the end of the Cold War, a number of militarized lands in the United States have undergone dramatic transformations. Sites once known as chemical weapons plants, bombing ranges, or ammunition depots have become national wildlife refuges dedicated to habitat conservation and, often, public use. Turning to two of these military-to-wildlife refuges, Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado and Assabet River in Massachusetts, this chapter examines how the perceptions of the visiting public and refuge managers relate to the layered ecological and cultural attributes of each site. These sites and comparisons highlight some of the challenges and opportunities encountered in the ecological restoration of complex landscapes, while also indicating how regional characteristics may foster different conceptions of restoration, conservation, and commemoration.

Rocky Flats is a 6,240-acre former nuclear weapons manufacturing complex in Colorado, 26 km northwest of downwind Denver, at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains’ Front Range. At Rocky Flats, between 1952 and 1989, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its successors manufactured plutonium triggers. After remediation (1996–2005), 4,000 acres of buffer zone were transferred to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), to manage as Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge (2007). Drawing on research materials from local libraries and archives, this essay explores the “weapons to wildlife” (W2W) conversion of a militarized environment in Denver’s “Gunbelt.” The various phases in Rocky Flats’ demilitarization are examined, showing how Rocky Flats’ multilayered identity—as ranch land, weapons factory, place of work, rallying point for antinuclear protest, and serendipitous reservoir of biodiversity—features in visions of the site’s future and shape how it is remembered.

This chapter describes tamarisk management at Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, located on the Rio Grande in central New Mexico, from a resource manager's perspective. The Refuge was established in 1937 as a wintering area for migratory birds, particularly the sandhill crane (Grus canadensis). To maintain habitat for the thousands of birds and other wildlife that depend on the Refuge, tamarisk had to be controlled and if possible eradicated from floodplain areas. The chapter begins with an overview of the Refuge's early experiences with tamarisk establishment and control during the years 1942–1992 before turning to its implementation of adaptive management techniques for larger-scale research projects from 1992 to 2000. It then considers the Refuge's successes with respect to establishment of native plants and the challenges it encountered, along with its focus on landscape level tamarisk control in 2000–2010. Finally, it discusses the Refuge's prospects and steps for tamarisk control and management in 2010 and beyond.

This chapter presents the story of Adak Island, which implicates many of the questions that environmental law is designed to address. The first part of the story considers the wildlife management issues that are colored by the designation of the wildlife refuge and the history of the island's uses. The second part of the story examines how the military changed the island's landscape, and how the departure of the military prompted a cleanup dictated by the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)—also known as the Superfund law. The rest of the island's story considers how the law awarded the abandoned property to native Alaskans and how the law is struggling to help Adak develop a sustainable fishery.

This chapter examines the high-profile clashes between federal law enforcement officials and members of another of Arizona's border ministries, No More Deaths. The group's approach is more confrontational that that of Humane Borders, having adopted the strategy of “civil disobedience” and “civil initiative” of the Sanctuary days in their efforts to stop migrant death, to raise awareness about the suffering of migrants, and to protest federal laws, which the group believes are unjust, immoral, and ultimately responsible for migrant deaths. The chapter looks at the range of initiatives that No More Deaths has launched over the years (Arks of the Covenant, Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime, Migrant Aid Centers, and Abuse Documentation), as well as at the dramatic legal suits brought against No More Deaths’ members by federal officials for illegally harboring migrants, as in the case of Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss, and for littering on national park land, as in the case of Walt Staton and Daniel Millis. This chapter shows the deeply contentious relationship between federal officials and interfaith activists at the border.

In the Bunkerville standoff, Cliven Bundy initially served as a symbol of a conservative American under attack by a runaway government. Two years later, Ammon Bundy and Ryan Bundy joined with a number of militia members in an offensive operation to take back federal land in Oregon, ostensibly for “we the people.” The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Occupation showed how far the Patriot Movement would go in challenging federal authority, and it showed the insurrectionist tendency in the Patriot Movement’s civil religious constitutionalism. It also showed the limits of conservative support. In this case, the occupiers said that they went to the Malheur refuge to defend the people of Harney County, but most of them were from out of state, and they repeatedly ignored requests to leave from county officials. The occupation ended with one fatality and numerous arrests, but the federal government’s prosecution largely failed in court.

In light of rapid environmental change, the role of history in mediating our relationship to the natural world is increasingly contentious. For ecological restoration, the challenge is particularly acute, as restoration has traditionally looked to the past in establishing goals and judging success. Here, the debate over history often centers on two opposing poles: one in which historical, predisturbance conditions remain the touchstone for restoration, and the other in which both history and nature are viewed as passé. By breaking down traditional binaristic categories, hybrid landscapes such as former military sites can disrupt these polarities, opening new possibilities for ecological restoration. This chapter argues that national wildlife refuges at former US military sites—and the diverse narratives surrounding them—offer the potential to creatively explore relationships between nature, culture, and history in ecological restoration, showing how natural and cultural histories remain relevant, even in the face of significant environmental change.

Chapter 1 provides a discussion of the natural formation history of the Great Dismal Swamp, beginning with the immediate post-glacial period (around 10,000 years ago) up through the present. It traces the slow development of the swamp as a huge 2,000-square-mile natural basin filled in with water and detritus across several millennia resulting in the mature Great Dismal Swamp some 6,000 years ago. Also included are discussions of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as stewards of the largest remaining contiguous tract of swamp, the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Finally, the impacts of canals to natural processes in that Refuge are discussed as are the natural characteristics of the two central archaeological sites, located on large islands in the swamp, that are the focus of analysis in this volume.

This chapter presents a case study of the hotly embattled Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a remote, roadless region in the bush of northern Alaska. ANWR is located several hundred miles north of the city of Fairbanks. Some have contended that “the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is the most fought-over chunk of wilderness in the world.” One main source of the opposition to drilling in ANWR comes from indigenous Athabascans, the Gwich'in nation in particular, who fear that fossil fuel extraction will significantly impact the life and migratory patterns of the Porcupine caribou herd that is the foundation of their life and culture.

This chapter describes several malformed frog hotspots, and also describes a staterun aquacultural site from northwestern Iowa that produces malformed frogs. It presents four sets of radiographs of animals from malformation sites in other parts of the country, including: (1) northern leopard frogs from Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, site; and sets of bullfrog radiographs from (2) the Ripley Pond site in Ohio, (3) a Santa Clara County, California site and (4) a Switzerland County, Indiana site. Finally, the chapter briefly describes the U.S.F.W.S. National Wildlife Refuge sampling program.

When faced with the ecological horrors of animal agriculture, some look to hunting as an escape—as the environmentally friendly way to put meat on the table. This chapter explores the environmental effects of hunting, exposing a handful of myths that help to make this sport appear to be environmentally friendly, animal friendly, socially acceptable—even morally exemplary. As noted, this book is written specifically for those who have a choice as to what they eat. This book is not a criticism of those who truly have few dietary options (for example, due to affordability or lack of availability). . . .For millennia men dreamed of acquiring absolute mastery over nature, of converting the cosmos into one immense hunting ground. . . . . . .—HORKHEIMER AND ADORNO 2 4 8 . . . In the United States, wildlife conservation was established by hunters for hunters because of hunters. In the late 19th century, Theodore Roosevelt complained that commercial hunters had decimated wildlife—that a comparatively small population of “market” hunters profited while the nation was stripped of hunter-target species (S. Fox 123). To address these concerns, he founded the Boone and Crockett Club (BCC) in 1897, with the following mission: “[T] o promote the conservation and management of wildlife, especially big game, and its habitat, to preserve and encourage hunting and to maintain the highest ethical standards of fair chase and sportsmanship in North America” (“About the B & C Club”). “Conservation” is a utilitarian, human-centered term promoting the protection of wildlife and wilderness for human use. Accordingly, the BCC promoted laws protecting “every citizen’s freedom to hunt and fish,” and established wildlife as “owned by the people and managed in trust for the people by government agencies” (“About the B & C Club”). As a result of the BCC, the U.S. government was placed in charge of managing wildlife on behalf of hunters.

Isles of Amnesia is about the American-owned islands that are largely unknown and all but forgotten. The island ecosystems are simple and historically damaged by weeds and pests as a result of human exploitation. American history of past introductions of pests onto islands is being reversed by conservation actions that include rat and cat eradications. Active restoration of seabird colonies is required in perpetuity, especially with the specter of global climate change, particularly sea level rise. The islands are now included in the largest protected area on earth, in the Pacific Remote Islands National Marine including Howland, Baker and Jarvis Island, Palmyra Atoll, Kingman Reef, Johnston and Wake Islands; at Rose Atoll National Marine Monument and in the Mariana Trench monument. Many of these islands were already managed as national wildlife refuges on land and protection extends out to the Exclusive Economic Zone to include coral reefs crowning immense submarine mountains, fertile oceanic currents, unique geographic climate regimes, and incredible marine fecundity.

In other Southwestern cities, like Tucson, El Paso, and Albuquerque, with Mexican urban cores that preexisted Anglo settlement, a cultural, if not political, condominium of power sharing had evolved over time. Phoenix was a more straightforward product of Anglo America. Notwithstanding that Trinidad Mejia Escalante, the wife of the founding father, Jack Swilling, was Mexican, the city’s origin myth was one of Anglos re-creating a city on top of Hohokam remnants, and it was reinforced by a strong presence of Mormon settlers in the East Valley, with their own version of white pioneerism. Anglo dominance was unquestioned for at least a century. As an early twentieth-century promoter put it, Phoenix was “a modern town of 40,000 people, and the best kind of people too. A very small percentage of Mexicans, negroes, or foreigners.” For sure, the public drama and energy of the civil rights era ushered some nonwhite politicians into high office—Raul Castro became governor and Alfredo Gutierrez senate majority leader in the late 1970s. But it was only in recent years that Anglo ascendancy had been challenged by the mercurial growth of the Latino population (according to the 2010 U.S. census, 30.8 percent of the state, 31.8 percent of Maricopa County, and 34.1 percent of Phoenix itself, all numbers that had more than doubled since 1990), spreading well beyond the traditional barrio districts where its political representatives had been contained. Anxiety about the decline of demographic and political dominance was a new wrinkle in the ongoing debate about population growth that Phoenix had long hosted. Historically, most of the anxiety about growth was founded, with good reason, on fears that water supplies would not be adequate for the rapidly expanding urban needs. Concerns about the deterioration of air quality, wilderness loss, and the overall environmental impact of urban sprawl had sharpened the anxiety over time. But the influx of Mexican immigrants from the south after the passage of NAFTA changed its tenor. Metro Phoenix had only 86,593 foreign-born residents in 1980, and by 2005, 612,850 were foreign-born, most of them from Mexico.

For most of two centuries, the United States was a nation of small farms and many farmers, raising much of their own food along with one or more cash crops and livestock for local markets. Today, farms run by families of weatherbeaten farmers, pie-baking farm wives, and earnest 4-H offspring are disappearing. Americans live on supermarket or take-out food, mostly produced on extensive, highly mechanized and chemical-dependent industrial-scale “conventional” farms, raising single-crop monocultures or single-breed livestock. The larger farms cover tens of thousands of acres, too much for single families to manage. It is not agriculture, but agribusiness— an industry run by corporations. Conventional industrial agriculture is highly productive, and supermarket food is cheap. So why should anyone worry about growing food with chemical fertilizers, expensive equipment, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals? The reasons, acknowledged even by the industry, are that agribusiness “saddles the farmer with debt, threatens his health, erodes his soil and destroys its fertility, pollutes the ground water and compromises the safety of the food we eat.” Croplands presently encompass some 57 million acres in the 11 western states (table 2.1). Giant plantations consume huge amounts of natural resources—soil, fertilizers, fuels, and water. Synthetic fertilizers keep overused soils in production, until they become too salty (salinated) and must be abandoned. Industrial farming has taken over large areas of wildlife habitat, including forest, scrub, desert, or prairie, to replace degraded croplands. The clearings and massive pesticide applications threaten or endanger large and increasing numbers of plant and animal species in the western United States. Pesticide exposures sicken family farmers and agribusiness workers in the fields, and add environmental poisons to our diet. Pesticides and other problematic agricultural chemicals accumulate in our bodies. Agribusiness consumes especially huge amounts of increasingly costly, nonrenewable petroleum. “Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten” to run fleets of immense plowing, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and processing machines, plus countless irrigation pumps. Growing a pound of American beef consumes half a gallon of petroleum. A top executive of the giant agriculture-chemical corporation Monsanto has admitted that “current agricultural technology is not sustainable.” High-tech agriculture, such as cloning and genetically modifying crops, does not help conventional agriculture become more sustainable.

At the oldest of Arcata’s treatment wetlands, it’s now possible to walk on water. Over three decades of filtering sewage, Arcata’s wetland cells have developed floating mats of dead cattail stems and leaves underlain by living roots, resilient enough to support a person’s weight. The short journey across Treatment Wetland 3 is a strange experience, like walking on a soggy trampoline. Water seeps through the cattail mat and into footprints. On a February day, a dense maze of brown cattail stems stretches twelve feet above the wetland’s surface, their shaggy brown seedheads waving in the breeze. A stroll across the treatment wetland is as close as a modern American can hope to get to the feel of the floating tule islands that William Finley camped on in the upper Klamath Basin in 1905, and that crowded California’s unspoiled marshes before the Gold Rush. The floating mats in Arcata were created by accident when the city’s treatment plant operators increased the depth of the treatment marshes, part of an effort to improve their declining performance. To their surprise, the dense growth of cattail rose off the bottom and continued to thrive, roots dangling in the water. The wetlands have aged. “Arcata’s is the grandmother municipal treatment wetland,” says David Austin, an environmental engineer with CH2M Hill who specializes in treatment wetlands design. Austin remembers studying the Arcata wetlands as a student at University of California at Davis in the 1990s. “It was a pioneering system. Now it’s an old design— one that wouldn’t be used today.” In 2016, three decades after Bob Gearheart’s unconventional marshes began cleaning Arcata’s sewage, the city’s wastewater plant faced a crisis. During the cold rains of winter, the system often failed to perform to the standards set in its discharge permit. Every part of the plant had aged to the point where its performance was in decline. At the headworks, the two giant Archimedes screws that push raw sewage uphill through a coarse screen had been running for decades; their metal housings were rusting away.

After a half century of ditching, diking, and draining the swamplands of southern Florida, a major effort to undo some of the ecological damage of those activities is now under way. In what is perhaps the largest ecological restoration effort of its kind anywhere, the federal and state governments are buying up large parcels of private land, changing dramatically the timing and quantity of freshwater flows to the huge “river of grass” that comprises the Florida Everglades, and even restoring the meanders and backwaters to the same Kissimmee River that an earlier generation of engineers “improved” by straightening and channelizing so as to eliminate its meanders and backwaters. Hundreds of millions of public dollars will be spent in this effort. If it succeeds, the steady degradation of one of the most biologically diverse and distinctive environments of the United States will be halted, and its recovery will have begun. The wood stork (Mycteria americana), snail kite (Rostrhamus sociabilis plumbeus), and Florida panther (Felis concolor coryi) are among the endangered species that this effort may ultimately benefit. Several hundred miles to the north, in the sandhills of North Carolina, a more modest but no less noteworthy conservation effort is under way. There, private owners of woodlots, horse farms, resorts, and even residential property are actively managing their longleaf pines to encourage the presence on their own land of another endangered species, the red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis). After a quarter century in which many private landowners came to fear the presence of endangered species on their land, sandhills landowners are now inviting them. The state and federal governments are spending few public dollars in this effort, and its scale is much smaller than that of the Everglades restoration. What drives the novel effort in North Carolina is a creative and flexible use of the provisions of the Endangered Species Act to encourage the sort of positive land stewardship that many landowners are willing to embrace. As the Florida and North Carolina examples illustrate, the challenge of effectively conserving the natural biological diversity of the nation requires the use of a flexible and diverse array of strategies.

In 1982, I helped remove feral cats from Jarvis Island. The greatest El Niño in recent history occurred as the cats were being removed. It was so severe that the Equatorial Undercurrent ceased to flow past the island. It was this fertile current that fueling a rich upwelling at the coral atoll, attracting whalers and guano-miners. Vast numbers of seabirds were destroyed by guano mining and the introduced rats and cats. The desert island was abandoned until the beginning of trans-Pacific aviation in 1935. American occupation involved colonization using Hawaiian high school grads, to develop island–hopping air strips, to prepare for WWII. My first visit to remove cats restored ecosystem functions not seen in 100 years. On my last visit in 2004, the smallest tern, the blue noddy was breeding again. The island and ocean ecosystems were protected by the 2013 creation of the Pacific Remote National Marine Monument.