Ineel Land Sought For Resource Research

Experts are considering a proposal to use the 890 square miles of high desert that comprise the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory for natural resource research.

“We have a piece of Idaho out there that, for the most part, is the same as it was when Lewis and Clark first passed through this area,” said Robert Breckenridge, a consulting scientist with the Natural Resource Institute operated by Lockheed Martin Corp.

And Idaho State University professor Jay Anderson said that makes the site, operated by a Lockheed Martin subsidiary, ideal for ecological research.

“It hasn’t been grazed since before 1950, and some areas longer than that,” said Anderson, who has studied long-term vegetation dynamics and fire ecology at INEEL. “It gives us an opportunity to look at long-term systems. There are very few places in the West where you can do that. It still runs as nature intended, and we can study it.”

The initial outline of such a plan was evolving on Wednesday as the first of a series of conferences on INEEL land management wrapped up in Idaho Falls.