Integrated Training Exercise, or ITX, is a training exercise on the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms that focuses on the tactical application of combined-arms maneuver warfare. ITX provides service-level assessments of battalion-size units and their associated combat support, combat service support, and aviation assets while conducting live-fire training. The purpose of ITX is to create a challenging, realistic training environment that produces combat-ready forces capable of operating as an integrated Marine Air-Ground Task Force. Marines with 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment are currently training in Fire Support Coordination Exercise, a sub-event of Integrated Training Exercise 3-21.
But while those Marines are training, they must train around desert tortoises, which are considered a threatened species. The Combat Center’s Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs center has had a long-term desert tortoise research program to study and protect desert tortoise populations. Managing editor Tami Roleff has more information about the program…
Baby desert tortoises have been raised in the Combat Center’s Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs “head start” program since 2006. The program studies desert tortoise survivability and seeks to bolster the population of desert tortoises not only in the base’s training areas, but also off base.
“With our head start facility, one of our functions is an ability to actually help restore populations off installation.”
NREA Ecologist Brian Henon says baby desert tortoises are threatened by ravens. Baby tortoises are the size of your palm until they’re about 9 or 10 years old, and have a soft shell, which make them easy pickings for ravens. The head start program raises the babies until they’re big enough to survive in the wild on their own, and then they’re released off base with GPS trackers so staff can keep track of them.
“By enabling protections of the tortoise off installation, it liberates areas on the base for the Marines to train and execute their mission.”
