MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, California – Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton hosted the 2019 Western Regional Partnership Principals’ meeting at the Pacific Views Event Center, Nov. 19-20, 2019. This is the first time since the launch of WRP 12 years ago, that the WRP Principals’ meeting was held aboard a military installation.
The WRP is a critical resource to identify and address common goals and emerging issues and to develop solutions that will support all of the WRP partners. The WRP is the link between the military, Federal, State, and Tribal leadership, coordinating all of these regions. It is important that the military has a voice in the WRP since there are more than 80 military ranges and installations throughout the western region. The Marine Corps has several installations and training facilities in the WRP area.
“Representatives from Marine Corps Installations West can sit directly across the table from the Bureau of Land Management,” said Maj. Julio Gonzalez, the regional airspace coordinator and the air traffic control training and readiness officer with MCI-West, MCB Camp Pendleton. “We can work out issues, give them our perspective, and we can hear their needs and their requirements and we can come to a consensus.”
The WRP comes together to identify common goals and new issues that come to light in the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah and come up with solutions that support WRP partners and protect natural and cultural resources, while promoting sustainability, homeland security and military readiness. Each state within the WRP has a percentage of Department of Defense managed land, which means each military installation has to do their part to ensure problem solving across the entire region.
“One thing that the Western Regional Partnership is basically buttoning up right now, as we speak, is a memorandum of understanding between the Department of Defense and Bureau of Land Management,” said Gonzalez. “Its to set up a coordination construct to help streamline how DOD and BLM manage land use. Whereas that would take a lot longer without a coordination like that.”
One goal for the WRP is range modernization and resilience to support mission readiness for the DOD partners. At the 2019 WRP Principals’ meeting, partners discussed what strategies they have to allow DOD to conduct military testing, training and operations. Some of the training and test ranges have much needed repairs that need to be done in order to restore mission readiness and increase the lethality of the forces.
The WRP could affect Camp Pendleton in many different ways. Camp Pendleton being the West Coast’s premier expeditionary training base, with a wide variety of training facilities, and over 125,000 acres of Southern California Terrain, working with the WRP can enhance training and increase mission readiness.