Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range (CMAGR)

 United States Navy, United States Marine Corps

The Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range (CMAGR) was created during World War II to provide much needed training in aerial gunnery and bombing to American aircrews.
The CMAGR currently provides more than 700 square miles of land and overlying and adjacent special use airspace that extends laterally for several thousands of square miles that, among other activities, supports training in air combat maneuvering and tactics; close air support (where air-to-ground ordnance is fired to directly support friendly forces engaged in ground combat); airborne laser system operations; air-to-air gunnery; and air-to-ground bombing, rocketry, and strafing. Artillery, demolitions, small arms and Navy Special Warfare training are also conducted within the range. The greater value of the CMAGR, however, is that it is a centerpiece in a much larger training complex that incorporates adjacent and nearby special use airspaces and ranges to support full spectrum combat operations so that Marines can realistically train as they will fight.

The CMAGR consists of about 459,000 acres of desert mountain terrain in Imperial and Riverside counties, California. The land jurisdiction map of the CMAGR closely resembles a checkerboard where every other section (640 acres or 1 square mile) is managed under either the Department of the Navy (DoN) or Bureau of Land Management (BLM) jurisdiction. The DoN owns 232,116 acres of the checkerboard while the alternate sections of the range (226,711 acres) are made up of withdrawn lands managed by the BLM. The public lands administered by the BLM are reserved for military uses for 20 years under the terms of the California Military Lands Withdrawal and Overflight Act of 1994 (Withdrawal Act). Because there is both a continuing military need for the CMAGR and the current land withdrawal is set to expire in 2014, the DoN is initiating the process set forth in the Withdrawal Act of 1994 to request Congress to renew the land withdrawal and continue the military reservation for another 25 years.

To support the land withdrawal application, the DoN is preparing a Legislative Environmental Impact Statement (LEIS). In addition to an alternative to renew the land withdrawal using the current land boundary, which approximates but does not directly follow certain prominent geographic features, the LEIS will assess alternatives that would align part of the CMAGR boundary to closely parallel but no longer cross features such as the Bradshaw Trail and Coachella Canal. Also, while all of the modern environmental laws apply to both BLM and the Department of Defense, the Navy manages their environmental stewardship responsibilities through the Sikes Act while the BLM manages their responsibilities through Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). Because the management goals and procedures of these Acts differ, two separate resource management plans are required to administer the checkerboard land jurisdiction pattern of the range. To provide for more unified management, alternatives in the LEIS will also consider assigning the natural and cultural resource management responsibilities to the Secretary of the Navy rather than continuing to split these functions between the Departments of the Interior and Defense.

www.chocolatemountainrenewal.com/html/projectinformatio...