2024 REPI Challenge Funding Helps Installations in Longleaf Areas

The Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) Program announced 17 funding recipients of the 2024 REPI Challenge, including two projects in the historic longleaf range. For the FY 2024 REPI Challenge, the REPI Program contributed over $23 million in DOD funds that was coupled with over $36 million in partner contributions. These innovative projects will promote compatible land uses, enhance military installation resilience, and relieve current or anticipated environmental restrictions on military testing, training, or operations. By distributing funds across 17 projects, the REPI Challenge contributed to initiatives benefiting 22 installations and their communities across the country.

Avon Park Air Force Range in Florida received $1.8 million for fire management for enhanced resilience within the Avon Park Air Force Range Sentinel Landscape, one of the last remaining grassland and longleaf pine savanna landscapes in Eastern North America. This project will fund an ecosystem restoration team to build regional capacity for fire management within the Sentinel Landscape. Increased controlled burning will benefit the installation by limiting installation infrastructure and operational exposure to wildfires while also improving the condition of several fire-dependent ecosystems on which many at-risk species, including Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, Florida Grasshopper Sparrows, and Eastern Indigo Snakes, depend.

A total of $13.5 million was also awarded to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort and Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island for the permanent protection of Gregorie Neck, a 4,409-acre property in Jasper County, South Carolina, located in the heart of the South Carolina Lowcountry Sentinel Landscape. Protection of this high-conservation value land will protect water quality, create a wildlife corridor, and increase climate resilience by allowing for marsh migration, thereby preventing incompatible land use and encroachment issues to important training routes between MCAS Beaufort and Townsend Bombing Range, Georgia.

From its pilot project in FY 2012, the REPI Program designed the REPI Challenge for partners and installations to cultivate innovative projects that harness creativity and protect critical testing and training capabilities.  Since FY 2012, the REPI Program has distributed over $169 million in program funds to REPI Challenge projects in 62 locations.  REPI Challenge projects have attracted more than $474 million in partner contributions that promote compatible land use, enhance military installation resilience, and relieve current or anticipated environmental restrictions on military testing, training, or operations in areas of strategic importance.

Click here to explore the REPI Challenge Story Map and the awarded projects.

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