ITAM work makes more areas     accessible for training

      Land Rehabilitation and Maintenance (LRAM) crews are spending the fall making potential training areas more accessible to soldiers, said Jeff Bullen.

Dean Downing of the Land Rehabilitation and Maintenance Crew uses a bulldozer to spread out a load of soil on a trail. (Photo by Rob Schuette)

      Bullen, the Integrated Training Area Management (ITAM) program manager, said one of the better methods to ensure training areas remain open to troops is to provide proper maintenance to ensure existing trails are in usable shape. This provides ready access to the installation’s 46,000 acres of potential training areas.

      “We don’t like to close areas to troops,” Bullen said. “If we need to rest (and rehabilitate) an area, we’ll rest it. But we prefer to keep an area open until we can get another area up to standard to replace it. In the meantime, we would like to open up more training areas to even-out use of the land.”

A member of the LRAM crew uses a tree stump grinder to clear brush from a trail. The crew has rehabilitated a number of trails this fall. (Photo by Jeff Bullen)

      The LRAM crew improves access trails to training areas by spreading shale to create more stable roads or cutting vegetation that is too thick for soldiers to move through to a training area, for example, Bullen said. The personnel use such equipment as bulldozers, trucks, and tree stump grinders to accomplish the work. Most of the training areas would be used for such things as troop or equipment movement or bivouacking.

      Spreading training throughout Fort McCoy helps the installation maintain its training areas and helps ensure the training areas will remain in proper condition to be used for future training, as well, Bullen said.

      Opening up additional land for training also benefits soldiers by providing them with more variety for training opportunities, Bullen said.

A newly rehabilitated trail provides an inviting access route for a training area at Fort McCoy.  The trail is on South Post. (Photo by Rob Schuette)

      “Using different training areas forces soldiers to improve their map reading, compass or global positioning system skills and helps get them to become better prepared to do their mission in unfamiliar locations, such as those they likely would encounter during a deployment,” he said.

     Bullen said the overall goal of the Army’s ITAM program is to achieve optimum, sustainable use of training lands by implementing a uniform program. ITAM has four components, which include Land Condition Trend Analysis, Training Requirements Integration, Education Awareness and LRAM. ITAM encourages proactive, rather than reactive conservation and land management.

      Fort McCoy has developed an educational program to make incoming units aware of their roles as environmental stewards.

      Units learn to conduct realistic training while ensuring sound environmental stewardship, Bullen said.