Ecological restoration ; Environment ; Military base ; Military site closure ; Nature reserve ; New Hampshire ; Restructuring process ; United States of America ; Wildlife
Recent military base closures and realignments in the United States have opened dozens of former training and testing sites to new uses and priorities, as national wildlife refuges. This paper acknowledges some of the real conservation opportunities
provided by military-to-wildlife (M2W) refuges, but emphasizes that restoration and conservation measures at these sites remain bounded by physical and sociopolitical constraints. One outcome of these constraints is opportunistic conservation, where habitat
and wildlife goals are shaped or constrained by the lingering presence of prior military uses. Working from case studies and interviews conducted at M2W sites in the United States, this research suggests that opportunistic conservation represents a limited