Covering some 280,000 acres near Savannah, Fort Stewart is the largest Army base east of the Mississippi — a key center for training combat-ready soldiers for rapid deployment to conflict zones worldwide.
Established in 1940, it’s one of many huge military installations that the federal government built nationwide to gird the nation for a world war and, later, the Cold War. Like other bases, much of Fort Stewart’s vast acreage was left in its natural state — thousands of acres of forests, swamps, grasslands, the kind of landscape that soldiers likely would encounter in battle.
But over the decades, something else happened: Despite the intense combat training, Fort Stewart’s protected natural areas became de facto nature preserves — even havens for many rare and endangered species. In the 1990s, the Pentagon, prodded in part by federal laws like the Endangered Species Act, came to realize that it had an obligation to protect the natural heritage at Fort Stewart and other installations. Now, the Pentagon aims to make its millions of acres of military lands models of conservation.
That’s what recently drew several of us Georgia Botanical Society members to Fort Stewart — to see firsthand its wildlife protection efforts, which last year garnered Fort Stewart the Army’s top Environmental Award for Natural Resources Conservation.
As we tromped through stately pine and hardwood forests, hoping to see some rare and endangered species, our leader, Dee Mincey, a Fort Stewart wildlife biologist, said the goal is to manage the base’s natural areas for maximum biodiversity while allowing for combat training.
That biodiversity includes the base’s many natural habitats: longleaf pine/wiregrass sandhills; pine flatwoods; hardwood/cypress/gum wetlands; swamp forests; seeps; bogs; bottomlands. Georgia’s largest remaining acreage of once extensive longleaf-wiregrass ecosystems is on Fort Stewart.
Seven species on the Endangered Species List also thrive there, including the red-cockaded woodpecker and the eastern indigo snake. In addition, Fort Stewart is a sanctuary for the gopher tortoise, a protected species in Georgia and the official state reptile.
IN THE SKY: From David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer: The moon is new Saturday. Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are in the east a few hours before sunrise.
Charles Seabrook can be reached at charles.seabrook@yahoo.com.
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