Colorado State University's Center For Ecological Management Of Military Lands Holds Open House In New Building
Monday, February 17, 1997
FORT COLLINS--The Center for Ecological Management of
Military Lands at Colorado State University will host an open
house 1-3 p.m. Feb. 21 to celebrate the completion of its newly
remodeled building.
The center is now housed in the former Vocational Education
Building on University Street, north of Jack Christiansen
Memorial Track on campus. The open house culminates six months of
renovations to the 11,332 square-foot building, originally built
in 1910 and recently added to the State Historic Registry.
Renovations cost about $700,000.
Refreshments will be served. Employees will host tours of
the new facility and demonstrate some of the center's ongoing
projects.
The new location enables the center's 45 employees, graduate
students and research associates to operate under one roof, said
Robert Shaw, the center's director. Previously, staff and
research personnel and facilities were scattered across campus.
"This is a major step in solidifying the center's role in
surveying the biological resources of military lands and helping
the U.S. military manage those lands in a responsible way," Shaw
said.
The CEMML was created in 1985 to help the U.S. Department
of Defense research, identify and inventory plant species on
portions of the 25 million acres tied up in military
installations. The center is one of the largest single research
efforts at Colorado State University, attracting more than $7
million in federal grants annually.
Since its inception, the center has conducted field work and research
on 85 military
installations in the United States and Germany. Studies show that military
installations are a haven for
rare or endangered plant species, thus making natural resource management
imperative. In other
cases, constant military exercises have degraded plant communities that are
crucial to maintaining
realistic training exercises.
As part of its duties, the center's floristics laboratory conducts
surveys on military installations
to document all plant species. Researchers collect samples of these plants
for the center's extensive
collection and propagate endangered species to learn more about their life
history and survival
mechanisms.
Using global positioning system technology, researchers pinpoint the
locations of endangered
or rare plants and map them for the military to better manage existing
natural resources.
"The Center for Ecological Management of Military Lands is a superb
example of Colorado
State University's achievements in developing knowledge for ecologically-
based management
planning," said Al Dyer, dean of the College of Natural Resources. "The
center is internationally
recognized for its leadership in the ecological management of military lands.
This renovation will help
continue that leadership role."
Some of the center's recent achievements include:
* A study at Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site in southeastern Colorado,
which showed that
tracked military vehicles contributed to the spread of a rare plant commonly
known as leafy false
goldenweed. That finding prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to
remove the plant from the
list of endangered plant species. Range rehabilitation practices were proven
ineffective and halted as a
result of the center's research.
* Center researchers found two plant species previously thought to be
extinct and a third not
recorded since 1890 on the Pohakuloa Training Area in Hawaii. Information
collected on two other
rare species on this installation prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
to remove them from the
list of threatened species.
* The center documented a steady decline in tree cover at Fort Carson
in Colorado, prompting
a tree planting program. The tree cover is vital to maintain realistic
training exercises.
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