Kirtland war games trash public forest

BEAR MOUNTAIN, N.M. (KRQE) - The remote Bear Mountains offer a recreational paradise primitive and untouched until a visitor looks down at military ordnance.

There lays an air burst simulator projectile used in training to mimic artillery shells exploding overhead. Scattered around are ammunition clips, smoke grenades, signal flares, artillery shells and bunkers.

In fact so much military hardware litters the landscape it appears someone fought a war here.

But this is neither Afghanistan nor some other war zone but a rugged corner of Socorro County north of Magdalena. Welcome to the outback in the Cibola National Forest where folks come to the wilderness to hike, camp, hunt and conduct war games.

Several times a year this part of the public forest transforms itself into a simulated war zone.

"It includes special operations training, combat search and rescue, land navigation, tactics training to prepare our airmen for deployment," Col. Robert Abernathy, commander of the 58th Operations Group at Kirtland Air Force Base, told KRQE News 13. "We're fortunate to operate in an area that allows us some open space so we have freedom of movement, and this particular area allows us that.

"It has some terrain relief. It has trees in which provides cover and concealment. So it's a more realistic training environment for our airmen to operate in."

The special-ops group leases thousands of acres in the national forest to conduct training classes operating day and night. To keep conditions realistic, airmen use simulated grenades and projectiles and fire off tens of thousands of rounds of blank ammunition.

Military use of the forest is not the problem. Service personnel can shoot ammo, toss smoke grenades and fire all the flares they want.

But as News 13 investigative reporter Larry Barker discovered, strict rules apply to the use of U. S. Forest Service property. Whatever trash the military brings in, the military must take out. And that is a problem.

"They need to be picking it up," District Ranger Dennis Aldridge of the Magdalena Ranger District told News 13.

Walk the backcountry with Aldridge, and his turf should reveal stands of juniper, stark rock formations and pristine habitat. Instead military paraphernalia carpets the forest floor. It's everywhere.

"Got blanks in it," Aldridge said of a loaded ammunition clip near a smoke bomb. "They ought to be picking it up. You're right."

Bob Suedkamp, a Forest Service land-use coordinator, said the regulations are clear.

"Our requirement is that they police the area when they are done," he said.

The Forest Service, however, is realistic about the nature of the training, he added.

"We're not going to worry about the stray smoke grenade canister or something that falls 20 miles from nowhere," Suedkamp continued. "But the concentrations of that material. We won't diminish our expectations just because it's remote.

"We'll still expect them to pick up after themselves because we want to maintain the natural character of the land."

Yet it is the character of the land that attracts the military training, according to Abernathy.

"We face a challenge whereby the students must, when they go by their final exercise, must operate in day and nighttime," he said. "And that's a difficult environment, when you are operating in the mountains and the woods, to pick up after yourself."

Abernathy credits the 58th with doing a superior job of preparing airmen for deployment. But he also concedes the unit dropped the ball on the cleanup and said it won't happen again.

"For our field training exercises, we've added one full additional day for cleanup," the colonel said. "Once all the training is complete, then they spend that additional time cleaning up the site.

"We've also implemented a procedure by which we use GPS markings so that we ensure that we know everywhere we've been so we can go back to those places and pick up after ourselves."

The Air Force response was immediate. Shortly after News 13 discovered the military litter, teams of airmen dispatched to the vast training area launched a search-and recovery-operation.

Military personnel fanned out across the Cíbola forest picking up military artifacts in a huge job involving thousands of acres.

"We need to be good stewards of the environment because we're not the only ones that enjoy that, the National Forest Service," Abernathy said. "We have to leave it clean, or cleaner than we found it."

All of the military ordnance used in the area is described as being training devices posing no danger to the public. With few exceptions the debris left behind and examined by News 13 had already been expended and included spent rounds of blank ammunition and flare and simulator canisters.