Vandenberg SFB hosts Earth Day event to highlight its environmental management
VANDENBERG SFB, Calif. - Vandenberg Space Force Base hosted an Earth Day event on Wednesday to highlight its environmental management of the property.
"The purpose of the event is to educate our base population on, our environmental protection and management here on the base, as well as ways that they can get involved in our, and our environmental management throughout this," said Samantha Kaisersatt, Vandenberg Space Force Base Chief of Environmental Conservation.
With its immense size, the base is home to a wide variety of pristine and mostly undeveloped ecosystems.
"We have 46 miles of coastline," said Col. Bryan Titus, Vice Commander Space Launch Delta 30. "We have 100,000 acres. In many ways, Vandenberg is like a national park, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a stretch of coastline that's more beautiful than what we have here on the Central Coast. We take that very seriously, and we take our responsibility to protect that very seriously."
Titus added the base has a number of programs and policies in place to help keep the environment in mind as it proceeds with its mission and operation.
"It's a balancing act, and when you're seeing all these increased launches, what I think is important to understand is that there's there's a lot of things that are happening that I think reduce our footprint on the environment," said Titus. "We've got a whole team here that is an environmental team. They don't have anything to do with launches other than to make sure that the launch and the other ignition activities that happen here at Vandenberg don't impact marine mammals or snowy plovers or red legged frogs and monitor that, so if we do begin to impact those species we understand that, and we're reporting back to both our state and federal regulators. The other thing that I think is important is how how close that strategic relationship is between us, the California Coastal Commission, NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) , Fish and Wildlife, both federal and state level, that relationship is absolutely critical, and it's a long-term relationship."
Kaisersatt has worked on the base for more than 20 years. She pointed out the base is home to a wide range of plant and wildlife, including more than a dozen that are listed as endangered, which she works to help protect.
"We have a lot of federally and state listed threatened and endangered species here on base," said Kaisersatt. "We have a lot of active management programs of those species. One of one of the most recognizable species, I would say here on base is the western snowy plover. We do a lot of intense management for that species. Of course, a lot of people are familiar with the beach restrictions, but a lot of people aren't familiar with the other management actions we take for that species, so for example, we monitor the reproductive success of that species throughout the nesting season. We also do predator management and habitat restoration, so a lot of the dunes are infested with non-native, invasive species that were planted for sand stabilization, and one of our active management programs over the last 10 years has been removal of those invasive species, and planting of native species to return those habitats so that it's better suitable for the snowy over to nest in those areas, s o we're doing a lot of things that benefit the recovery of the species here on base."
Wednesday's Earth Day event comes right on the heels of a California Coastal Commission meeting that was held last week in Long Beach regarding noise and environmental concerns, which has been raised by some due to the recent increase in launch activity.
Titus attended the meeting and spoke at length with commissioners to discuss base activities as they relate to the environment and concerns expressed by commissioners and members of the public..
"We're actually going to go back and meet again with the California Coastal Commission here in the next month or so, and we're going to answer all the questions that maybe, maybe I wasn't able to satisfactorily answer, last week," said Titus. "They're asking very fair questions, and I want to make sure that we have shared understanding on those topics before we move forward. We'll also be emphasizing what our biological monitoring program looks like, so we don't just get to keep increasing launches and say we think it'll be okay. We have been monitoring marine mammals, snowy plovers, red legged frogs and other species for literally decades, and we produce annual reports on any, any impacts that we're seeing, and in general, we're not seeing impacts, so as this launch cadence increases, we need to continue that monitoring, and we need to continue and regularly report the results of that monitoring.".
During the Wednesday Earth Day event, a number of food trucks were on hand. There was also a trailer for e-waste recycling for base personnel to properly dispose of unwanted electronics, plus prize giveaways, games and booster club/information booths.
