Conservation in craters: Narratives of endangered species bureaucracy within the department of defense

Within the United States, over 26 million acres have become militarized by the Department of Defense (DoD) as sites of preparation for conflict where soldiers are trained and housed, and weapons are tested and stored. In addition to the military occupants, these landscapes are inhabited by nearly 500 federally listed threatened and endangered (T&E) species. Working to fulfill the DoD's responsibility under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), natural resource managers—at the center of the relationship between the DoD and its lands—manage these species and the habitats upon which they depend, often in distinctly militarized ways (i.e., tanks to control invasive species; designing habitats for sightlines and cover from enemy fire). Through examples of military environmentalism, this paper describes how on-the-ground managers perceive the bureaucratic landscape of managing T&E species in a military context focusing on how the ESA is understood through a lens of conflict (between legal requirements and military needs) that is reframed as a motivation towards producing conservation outcomes through proactive management and policy innovation. We demonstrate how conflict does not necessarily lead to noncompliance but rather a complex process of aligning conservation goals in service of military ones and a renegotiation of the agency's responsibilities.