The Hidden Reason Military Bases Need Farmers

Brandon Andres Green, host of Good Neighbor Podcast Tulsa, sits down with Coral Eginton of Compatible Lands Foundation to talk about conservation, private land ownership, military readiness, and why the land surrounding military installations matters more than most people realize.

Coral explains how Compatible Lands Foundation works with landowners, local communities, and military partners to help protect open spaces near military installations. Through conservation easements, the organization helps preserve ranchland, farmland, parks, recreation areas, habitat, and other compatible land uses while also supporting the long-term mission of nearby bases.

This conversation breaks down a surprising reality: a military base can lose training capacity without ever losing a single acre, simply because development around the base creates conflicts with noise, aviation, water use, safety, or future mission needs. Coral explains how thoughtful land protection can reduce those conflicts while still allowing landowners to keep ownership, continue ranching or farming, and pass land down through their families.

You’ll also hear how this work plays out in places like the Camp Bullis Sentinel Landscape near San Antonio, where water conservation, Edwards Aquifer recharge, land planning, local partnerships, and military readiness all overlap. Coral shares why long-term relationships matter, why these agreements are built around each landowner’s goals, and how conservation can benefit both communities and national defense.

If you care about private land conservation, ranching, military communities, water protection, smart growth, or the hidden systems that help keep America’s military prepared, this episode gives you a fascinating look behind the fence line.

Sometimes protecting the mission starts by protecting the land around it.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Brandon Andris Green.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast Live. Today's guest works for conservation, private land ownership, local communities, and national defense. All meet. Compatible Lands Foundation helps protect landscapes near military installations in ways that can benefit landowners, preserve natural resources, and support military readiness. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Coral Edgington. Coral, how's it going?

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Hi, Brandon. Thank you. It's going well.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Thanks for being on our show. I know that your organization uses the phrase protect the landscapes that protect America.

Protecting Base Boundaries With REPI

SPEAKER_02 0:55

What does that mean in everyday terms?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Well, we are a very unique land trust. I mean, there's a lot of land trusts across the nation that do amazing holistic uh environmental work for species, particular resources. But our specific niche is actually protecting the boundaries of military installations. We use a federal program called the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program that partners with land trusts and local governments and other eligible entities like ourselves. And we look at military installations and their land uses in surrounding communities, and we work to keep open spaces open. A lot of that ends up in just protecting and preserving parks and recreational spaces, general open spaces. But one of the most compatible land uses around military installations is actually agricultural. So we end up with a lot of protected lands in our portfolios where we focus on establishing conservation easements that prevent development that might be incompatible with the military mission. But that also allows the landowner then they remain the landowner, can continue to operate on their land, have all tights and rival and all rights, title, and interest to continue operations or using their land as they see fit and passing that down through legacy. But we're also ensuring that the military mission is intact. So it's really a unique nexus because it's preservation of agricultural production, preservation of recreation and open spaces, preservation of habitat possibly for threatened endangered species, that all joins into that kind of holistic military mission where they don't want high-rise buildings on their boundaries or high density housing in places where they make a lot of noise or obstructions that would prevent aerial operations, things like that. So we take a you we take a look at the land use, we coordinate with the landowners and the local municipalities or governments, and then we come up with a encroachment management plan to actually protect and keep military mission training capabilities intact.

From Archaeology To Conservation Work

SPEAKER_02 2:49

I'm so curious, how did your own path lead from archaeology and cultural resource work into conservation and military partnerships?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Yeah, that does seem like a big jump if you don't have the pieces in between. Well, as you mentioned, my background is actually in archaeology. I did my undergraduate at UC San Diego. I'm from California originally, and I did my master's at Texas AM. I now live in Texas, so I've fully ported myself over. Um, and I actually was doing private consultation in California and I reached out to Fort Erwin in the Mojave Desert to consult with them on a project, and they didn't have an installation archaeologist, and they said they were looking for one. So I just jumped shipped from the private sector to the public sector and became a federal employee in 2016 and continued to do that for about a decade until I just recently left to become the executive director of Compatible Lands Foundation. So one of the things I don't think people realize is quite frankly, how much money the Department of Defense or Department of War actually invests into environmental conservation. Every military installation has to follow all the suite of federal laws. So your National Historic Preservation Act, your Endangered Species Act, uh, all of those come into account when any development or training happens on an installation. So there are wildlife biologists and archaeologists that work on these installations to protect resources. Um, so when I was at Fort Erwin, it was protecting there's 753,000 acres of training area out there in the Mojave Desert, thousands of archaeological sites. A lot of them are just simple lithic scatters, but some of them are habitation sites that date back to 10,000 years, you know. So there's a history there that is required to be federally protected. Um, I did that for a number of years and absolutely loved it. And then during an environmental inspection, command came around and said, hey, we're looking for someone to run our REPU program, the federal program I talked to you about, readiness and environmental protection integration. So I raised my hand and said that sounds like a nice change. Um, and it really is, you know, you get to see funding appropriated by the federal government to either protect habitat, cultural resources, species inside of the military installation. This funding that we're currently working under protects those same resources outside of the military installation. So while it's about preventing encroachment, that's the readiness component of it, the environmental protection component of it is to make sure that those resources are something that continue to contribute to the larger landscape that the military members and their families can continue to enjoy, that the local community can continue to take advantage of.

Conservation Easements Explained For Landowners

SPEAKER_02 5:32

And a little bit ago you mentioned conservation easement. For a landowner who's never heard of that term conservation easement, what is it? And what does it usually allow them to do or keep doing with their own land?

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Yeah. There's actually a lot of different types of easements, um, restrictive use easements, conservation easements. You they can be tailored in such a way that meets the needs of the landowner to continue their operations, but also whatever entity is attempting to establish that conservation. You know, we're just one of many thousands of land trusts that exist in the United States and hundreds that kind of work under this federal program to protect military installations. So it really is coordinating with your landowners to say, what are you currently doing with your land and what do you want to keep doing with your land? But essentially the conservation easement just prevents certain types of development that would be incompatible. So sometimes that is vertical structures that would affect aviation capabilities of a military installation, or possibly, you know, zoning against high density housing. So if it's a large open ranch or farm with a homestead on it, that landowner can keep branching, farming, keep their homestead, maybe even have a development pocket so they can add one or two homes for other family members in the future. But they're essentially agreeing under that conservation easement to never develop that land into something that's incompatible. So high density housing where there's a lot of military noise, or in landscapes where we're particularly concerned about water conservation and usage, we're really looking at like how many housing units are going into those landscapes and how is that drawing down from the local water source that the military and also the surrounding community depend upon. So it's trying to take that long-range look at land use planning because those military installations are not going anywhere. And a lot of times they're the economic driver of these communities. A lot of people live and work on the military installations or their families do. And so we need to make sure that that mission space is protected so that that economic driver and large employee, employer rather, on the landscape stays there with their mission. And uh, most of the time, people are really supportive of that. But from a landowner perspective, essentially we want to set up these conservation easements so that you can keep using your land exactly as you intended and exactly as you see for legacy planning for future years, but prevent those developments that would impede the military mission.

Coordinating Landowners Military And Communities

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Do you find it hard sometimes to kind of bring together these various entities? You have the landowners, the military leaders, let's say local communities and conservation groups, and maybe they all began with very different priorities. How does that work?

SPEAKER_01 8:10

I think that's where a partner like Compatible Lands Foundation comes in. You know, when we we work with the landowners directly. When there's a conservation easement established on that land, it's held by us. And we're the ones that are going to be reaching out to that landowner on an annual basis, reconnecting with them, seeing what they're doing with their land, making sure that they're following the terms of the easement. They're not directly interacting with the military. I think sometimes, um, depending on the landscape, right? Because Compatible Lands Foundation, we have programs across the U.S. We've got a number of them in Texas and Alaska. We've also got Utah, Georgia, a number of places. Every landowner is different. Um, every installation has a different level of support in its surrounding community. So it's really the landowners are our number one customer, right? We're there to serve them. We we have the long-term relationship with them. Even though these agreements are with the Department of War, the funds are to establish the conservation easement that we then hold. So it's really just understanding what the landowner needs and wants from their land and then coordinating with local entities to figure out where that VIN diagram overlaps.

Camp Bullis Water Planning And Growth

SPEAKER_01 9:17

I'm here in San Antonio, Texas. Um, we have one of our largest landscapes here. We support the Camp Bullis Sentinel landscape, which is that's a whole nother thing, but it's basically multiple installations that all recognize the need for land use planning and encroachment management that come together with a much larger goal. So one of our priorities here in this landscape is water conservation and recharge of the Edwards Aquifer. So we work with the City of San Antonio or the San Antonio River Authority, multiple other land trusts, the Nature Conservancy, Green Space Alliance, a ton of other people in this local community that says it stitches together tens of scores of partners to look at what our collective goals are. And there are voices of the community that come to those tables that talk to us about what their land use planning looks like. Every installation does their own land use plan, but we're trying to bring the aperture of that open a little bit more and look at the larger and broader surrounding community and what that might look like 10, 15, 20 years from now. These conservation easements are intended to be in perpetuity protection of the land. So that's forever. And we're really trying to get a scope of what is this landscape gonna look like in 20 years, knowing that housing is a need, that water is going to get used. But how do we plan out and protect the most critical spaces for either training and operations or resource conservation while at the same time working with developers knowing development's gonna happen? Where it happens is really the question, not if it happens.

Win Win Projects For Farms Parks Habitat

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Is there a project that comes to mind that maybe kind of captures that kind of win-win outcome scenario that compatible Lands Foundation is really trying to create?

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Honestly, they're they're all win-win. And I say that and not to be, you know, over um optimistic here, but they really are all win-win because essentially the a landowner that wants to participate in this program, which is entirely voluntary, you know, will reach out to landowners and say, hey, your parcel of land is in one of our priority areas and we'd really like to put a conservation easement on it, they can say no, obviously, right? So they have to be willing, but um essentially they're selling those development rights to a land trust that is never going to use them by the tenants under which we were incorporated. And they will get an infusion of funds because it's a thing of value, right? So they get a percentage of the value of their land, of their easement in cash, which a lot of times helps, especially our producer landowners, to put that right back into their landscape, to buy additional to do infrastructure improvements or buy additional equipment that they might need. Um, so that's a win-win, right? Because the land is protected. So the Department of Defense gets what they want out of it, their mission space is protected, the landowner gets an infusion of cash and they can continue utilizing that land how exactly as they have been, exactly as it's written in the conservation easement, just with some development restrictions. Um and then on a larger scale, you know, there are less resources being drawn down by additional housing or, you know, water conservation perspective. Um and a lot of times too, we're looking at open space that is sometimes used for recreation, right? It's maybe not designated. We have this in a lot of our Alaska programs, but it's maybe not designated as recreation or as a park, but people do use it on a regular basis. And it would be a huge impact to the community if that resource went away. And so it's establishing the protection in the conservation easement is kind of like step one, and then looking at what that landowner wants to do with that land long term. And we don't just, you know, meet a landowner, slap a conservation easement, and walk away. We end up with lifetime relationships with these folks and like to help steward them into other opportunities too, whether that be an agricultural producer that's looking for some assistance from Department of Agriculture NRCS funding to improve their operations, or it's a local entity that says their long-term plans for this parcel is to turn it into a park, but they don't really have the funds to do that right now. If it's in the military's priority area, we can acquire that and then wait until such a time that they do have the funds to turn that into the park and then work a compatible project with them to make it formally recreation. So there's a lot of things that the program can do. Preventing incompatible development is one of them. Natural resources conservation, so looking at threatened endangered species that the military is required to manage under Threatened Endangered Species Act, and helping protect land that is habitat for those species so they can basically do management off of the installation. That also helps the local community because then there's amazing natural resources and ecological habitat and species that everybody gets to take advantage of. Again, I'll bring it back to local, but golden cheeked warpler is a species that's here in San Antonio. And the Nature Conservancy has done a lot of work outside of Camp Bullis to protect lands for that species, for that habitat, so that the people actually get to enjoy that particular bird for, you know, as long as as long as we can maintain that habitat. So there's a lot of overall overlap and benefit from a local perspective, from a land use perspective, and from uh an encroachment management perspective, I feel like.

Nationwide Reach And How To Connect

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Are you guys I noticed that you said Alaska? Are you guys nationwide? And also if a listener feels like they have compatible land for you guys, are they ever able to reach out to you directly?

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Yeah, only yeah, we are nationwide. Um, so we don't have um military installations in all the states, right? But we will work nationwide. There's a lot of other repi partners that do what we do that are local land trusts or nationwide land trusts. Um if a landowner, if you live near a military installation, and sometimes it's not as near as you would think. I'm not talking about like the one parcel on the boundary. Um, we're when we look at resource conservation, the scales of some of these areas that we're working in under this program can be quite broad. So if there was a landowner that was somewhat near a military installation and thinks that they might want to enroll in a land conservation program like this, they could definitely reach out to us. And if they're at a location where we are not one of the active partners, we can always put them in contact with one of those active partners. The conservation community is it's not small by any means, but I feel like everybody does know each other. I always joke that it's two degrees of Kevin Bacon because it's everybody's worked for somebody else or leveraged somebody else's money or has a connection somewhere, and a lot of the people that work in these programs have worked the federal side and the private side and kind of flip-flop between them. So we will be more than happy to pass those landowners off to our colleagues.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

And what's the best way for listeners to connect with Compatible Lands Foundation?

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Well, we have a website, uh, it's compatibilands.org. Um we also have social media in a in a multiple places. So Facebook, Instagram, we just started a YouTube channel. Um, but you can go on to the compatibilands.org website and check out our about and contact pages that can get you my email address or anybody else's email address to get in direct contact with. Um and we're actually in the midst of overhauling that, so it'll be a little bit more mobile friendly in the future. Um, but that will definitely get you to the points of contact so you can reach out and let us know if you're interested or if you have someone that might be. And like I said, if it's not a landscape we currently work, then we'll just uh coordinate a warm handoff to the entities that do work on that landscape to see if those properties are within the footprints that people are looking

Closing Thoughts And Nomination Info

SPEAKER_01 16:48

at.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

That's great. Coral, I so appreciate you being on the show and thank you for helping us understand how protecting land can also strengthen communities and support the people responsible for actually protecting our country.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Absolutely. Yes, national security, food security, water security, all the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gmptulsa.com. That's gmptulsa.com or call 918 301 6356.