Department of Defense Grant Protects Florida’s Forests
More than 20,000 acres of longleaf pine and other forests near Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, will be permanently protected through one of two grants announced for the 2013 Readiness and Environmental Protection Initiative Challenge (REPI) Challenge Program. The Eglin easement is the largest land transaction in the REPI program’s history. It adds to the Northwest Florida Greenway/Flyway and protects F-35 Joint Strike Fighter flight routes and access to the eastern Eglin Range.
The second grant will help protect and enhance management on more than 2,000 acres of critical prairie habitat near Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State. The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (the Endowment) helped administer the Department of Defense’s 2013 REPI Challenge Program as a service to the Department of Defense.
“The REPI team achieved an extraordinary outcome for military readiness, natural resource conservation, and forests,” noted Peter Stangel, Senior Vice President at the Endowment. “They took $5 million and used it to attract an additional $25.75 million in other public and private funding for these two projects. That’s better than a 5:1 return on investment. It’s a terrific example of stretching public funding for maximum impact while also providing tremendous value for all the parties involved with these projects.”
The REPI Challenge Program, part of the larger REPI program, awards up to $5 million in one or two grants. It seeks to incentivize new business practices that preserve compatible land uses and conserve natural landscapes in support of military readiness. The REPI Challenge puts a premium on harnessing the creativity of the private sector to access and leverage unconventional sources of funding, attract philanthropic support, and take advantage of market-based approaches to land and resource conservation. Since 2003, the REPI program has protected 264,000 acres of buffer land at 66 locations in 24 states across the country.
Eglin Air Force Base is the Air Force’s largest installation at more than 463,000 acres. The funded project is a collaboration that includes the State of Florida, The Trust for Public Land, and a private landowner. A $1.75 million award from the REPI Challenge Program was leveraged 10:1 to purchase an easement on land valued at $19.5 million. The property provides habitat for the gopher tortoise, a species of concern. The new property and relocation efforts for this species may help preclude the need for listing the tortoise as threatened, benefitting Eglin as well as other property owners across the southeast range of the animal. The project also protects more than two dozen jobs related to natural resources management.
The project at Joint Base Lewis-McChord is the culmination of years of collaboration between The Center for Natural Lands Management, the U.S.D.A. Natural Resources Conservation Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Thurston County, the State of Washington, and private landowners. A REPI award of $3.5 million is being leveraged nearly 2.5:1 to conserve vanishing prairie habitat and to establish a stewardship endowment fund.
The REPI program is an excellent example of collaborative partnerships that work to protect forests and other lands that serve nearby communities. The program’s ideals align with those of the Endowment and showcase the ecological, social, and economic benefit of the collaborative, cost-sharing partnership investment model.
