Fort Drum grows forests, provides training resource
By Sgt. Neal Snyder
Fort Drum forester Jason Wagner marks a tree for cutting. Careful forest management ensures the post meets its training requirements.
Sgt. Neal Snyder
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, April 18, 2006) – In the moments before the storm struck, Jason Wagner’s paint gun spat a blue round at a tree about 12 feet away. The damp smack, audible over a background of rustling branches, signaled doom for its target.
Wagner moved on, marking trees for thinning as part of the ongoing effort to shape the forests of Fort Drum, N.Y.
Meeting training requirements
Marking trees with paint spots puts the finishing touches on what Wagner, the post’s chief forester, calls the art and science of silviculture.
“Silviculture is managing a forest so the customer gets what he wants out of the land,” he said. In this case, the landowner happens to be the Army.
“The primary mission of Fort Drum’s forestry program is to provide a forested environment that meets the requirements of the current mission training scenario,” Wagner said.
At the same time, Fort Drum wants to make certain it has “forest after forest, forever,” said Wagner, using a phrase repeated by Richard LeClerc, chief of the installation’s Natural Resources Branch.
“We’re going to ensure that the trainer gets the job done,” LeClerc said. “But we’re also going to ensure that that land, those resources, are available for the next trainer behind him, and the next trainer behind him.”
The science behind the art of silviculture on the installation rests in a computerized database housed on the first floor of the World War II barracks housing the Natural Resources Branch. That database powers the Natural Resources Management Unit (NRMU) framework.
Rooted in a forestry-classification system, the NRMU concept relates installation natural resources to locations, not programs. With more than 15,000 units, Fort Drum’s NRMU map resembles a jigsaw puzzle.
For each piece, the NRMU database serves up information from the installation’s fish and wildlife, wetlands, forestry and National Environmental Policy Act programs.
“Each of these units acts as a placeholder for any data we collect on that specific location,” LeClerc said.
Each unit represents a different type of land cover. A flyover in 2000 gave LeClerc and his staff the view used to draw the NRMU map. A satellite- guided visit to each NRMU gave them the hard truth: About 60 percent of their early assumptions were not accurate. Walking the NRMUs helped the installation correct those assumptions.
Land management
Of Fort Drum’s 107,000 acres, forest covers more than 70,000, with some 60,000 acres manageable, Wagner said.
“The importance of the NRMU is that it allows us to manage our large land base on a landscape level,” said forester Rod Voss, a research associate with the Colorado State University Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands.
Using handheld computers, natural resources staff members update the NRMU database whenever they go into the field.
The NRMU database also automates the process of filing the National Environmental Policy Act documents required every time a unit goes into the field for training.
“We can now do in 15 to 30 minutes a job that used to take a week to 14 days,” said SSG James Smotherman, terrain noncommissioned officer for the 2nd Battalion, 15th Field Artillery Regiment.
When trainers like Smotherman submit their plans, they update the information for the NRMUs they plan to use. The natural resources staff tracks the requests to project how to manage the land.
Land offers versatility to training scenarios
In addition, if they know what kind of training the Soldiers are looking for, the staffers can use NRMU information to recommend areas already prepared for that kind of training.
The NRMU framework lets the environmental staff know which units, which animal species and what kind of trees are on practically every square meter of Fort Drum.
This helps with long-term planning. “Regardless of changes of commander, mission or weapon systems, we’re thinking about what kind of landscape will fill the training need,” LeClerc said.
The natural resources team is talking with the Integrated Training Area Management (ITAM) staff about using NRMUs for their own planning.
It’s a natural fit, Wagner said. “I cut down the trees, ITAM comes in and gives a beautiful finished product for the Soldier to train in,” he said.
The 10th Mountain Division — among the most frequently deployed units in the Army — uses the versatility of Fort Drum to practice operations and training exercises throughout the year.
“I like the woods here at Fort Drum; a lot of the area is open in the wood line,” said SGT William Scott of Company A, 1st Bn., 31st Infantry Regt.
Due east and in the direct path of Lake Ontario’s snowy effect on the weather, Fort Drum provides harsh training for Soldiers, but grows hardwood like a peach grows fuzz. In the South, installations struggle with their pine forests, Wagner said. But here, “Put sunlight on the forest floor and you’ll get trees,” he said. “We can’t keep up with the growth rate — we’re losing some range space.”
Practically no chip of wood cleared from Fort Drum goes unused. The best hardwood — including cherry, maple and birch — goes to local sawmills. Lesser trees go to paper mills or to fuel a nearby energy plant. Firewood harvesters can buy $10 permits to thin plots too small for the timber industry. And there’s plenty left as windfall to fertilize another generation of forests.
That kind of detail makes Army forestry a self-sustaining program. Some profits remain on Fort Drum to pay the salaries of Wagner, Voss and other full- and part-time foresters. The rest goes into an Armywide forestry fund.
Foresters trim out certain areas and market the resulting timber based on the type of training to be conducted, when the area is needed and the quality of the trees.
“When the trainers tell me what they want to do, I tell them how much time we’ll need to remove the trees,” Wagner said. “As long as they get me involved early, I can do whatever they need me to do and collect for the Army the value of the harvested timber.”
If a trainer requires trees to be a certain distance apart so Soldiers can practice driving on rough terrain, then the foresters have the trees harvested accordingly. If a unit needs a high canopy for overhead cover, then the forestry program can accommodate that as well.
“We want to provide adequate training grounds for the troops, but we also want to make sure we provide for sustainability into the future,” Voss said. “We want to make sure where we now have forests, we’ll always have forests.”
(Editor's note: This story was first printed in the April issue of Soldiers magazine.)