Open AccessBombing for Biodiversity—Enhancing Conservation Values of Military Training Areas
Author(s) -
Zentelis Rick,
Lindenmayer David
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
conservation letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.153
H-Index - 79
ISSN - 1755-263X
DOI - 10.1111/conl.12155
Subject(s) - business , training (meteorology) , environmental resource management , resource (disambiguation) , biodiversity , government (linguistics) , geography , environmental planning , environmental protection , ecology , economics , meteorology , computer network , linguistics , philosophy , computer science , biology
Global defense spending is $US1753 billion annually or approximately 2.5% of the world GDP. Significant time and resources is spent in training 28 million defense personnel worldwide. Much of this training on land takes place within specifically designated military training areas (MTAs). Globally, the size of the MTA estate is likely to be very large, but just how large is unknown. Our preliminary analyses has identified that MTAs cover at least 1% of the Earth's surface. This figure is believed to be closer to 5–6% as no verifiable data exist for the majority of Africa, South America and Asia. MTAs occur in all major global ecosystems and have the potential to increase the global protected area network by at least 25%. MTAs therefore have an important complementary role to play in global conservation. However public policy makers, the scientific community, government agencies, and nongovernment organizations have largely ignored MTAs as a conservation resource. To realize the potential major contribution to conservation that MTAs can play we propose four key policy changes: (1) better document the environmental values of MTAs, (2) develop integrated MTA land management models, (3) increase dedicated financial resources for the land management of MTAs, and (4) strengthened global leadership to manage MTAs as an environmental resource.