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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 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.

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 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.