¿LE PREOCUPA a usted la fauna y la flora? ¿Le gustaría que nuestros paisajes fueran verdaderos paraísos de la biodiversidad sostenible? Muy fácil: olvídese de parques y reservas naturales y créense en su lugar... ¡campos de entrenamiento y tiro militar!

Military exercises are boosting biodiversity, according to a study of land used for US training manoeuvres in Germany. Such land has more endangered species than nearby national parks.

The land is uncultivated, but also churned up by tank tracks and explosions. This creates habitat both for species that prefer pristine lands and those that require disturbed ground, explains ecologist Steven Warren of Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

Military land can host more species than agricultural land, Warren told a meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Montreal. What's more, its biodiversity can also exceed that of natural parks, where species that need disturbance cannot get a foothold.

Warren and his colleague Reiner Büttner of the Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology in Hemhofen, Germany, surveyed two US military bases at Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels in the southern state of Bavaria. Although the bases represent less than 1% of the state's area, they contain 22% of its endangered species, Warren told the meeting. The national parks cover a similar area but host fewer endangered plants and animals, Warren says.

(gracias al castigado-sin-blog Golan por el enlace.)