The following is the testimony presented by Richard Levins, in May 1980, to Congressional hearings on U.S. military activities on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. For decades, the small island of Vieques, just off the coast of Puerto Rico was the site of international protests. From 1941 to 2003, the eastern end of the island was utilized by the U.S. Navy and other NATO members as a training ground for war, pummeling the island with bombs as it conducted military training operations.
Ecology is a science of interconnected wholes, the relations of organisms (including people) and their environments. An integrated approach is necessary to avoid the errors that are made when parts of a system are separated out and treated as alternatives. I have attempted to look at Vieques as a whole system and have concluded that the presence of the Navy facilities and training program is harmful to Vieques, its people, and its environment. Some of the interactions are shown in Figure 1. The impact of the Navy acts in four main ways:
1. Direct Impact on the Health and Safety of the People
This includes physical injury from weapons, stress caused by noise and by helplessness in the face of alien control of their environment, and stress or injury caused by Naval efforts to control protest.
2. Denial of Economic Opportunity
This is a consequence of ownership of land by the Navy, interference with fishing, discouragement of tourism and other development, and degradation of the productivity of land and sea. Although grazing is permitted on some 18,000 cuerdas, the production is very low compared to the rest of Puerto Rico: income from products sold is about $48 per cuerda of pasture, compared to $206 per cuerda for Puerto Rico (197 census of agriculture). Investment is about $45 against $181 per cuerda in Puerto Rico; employment is one laborer for nearly 200 cuerdas as against one laborer for sixteen cuerdas in Puerto Rico as a whole. At the Puerto Rican rate of investment, there would be some 1,300 jobs created and $3-4 million of income generated. The reason for the low productivity is first, lack of control over the land and water, and second, overgrazing.
The significance of over-grazing is misunderstood both in the Navy's impact assessments and in Judge Torruella's decision: overgrazing is not an alternative explanation to the Navy's responsibility but one of the pathways by which the Navy affects Vieques. Over-grazing in Vieques, as in many parts of Africa, is the response to loss of land and economic necessity. Once begun, it is self-feeding: erosion increases, pasture is replaced by thorn scrub, and the relative over-grazing is intensified. Similarly, over-fishing of non-Navy areas and poaching are a consequence of the poverty the Navy helped to create. It is obscene to then claim that Navy restrictions on fishing or control of poaching constitutes conservation.
Vieques remains an impoverished area, with high unemployment, low income, little opportunity.
3. Direct Deterioration of the Environment
a. Vegetation changes since 1936 include: a reduction of 4,118 acres of cropland, 5,891 acres of open pasture, 188 acres of coconut plantation, 329 acres of mangroves, and a corresponding increase of 8,372 acres of scrub, 427 acres of barren land, and about 1,000 acres of forest. The forest can be considered improved, the rest deterioration. The scrub is mostly a thorny scrub with mesquite a major component. The reasons for scrub expansion include direct disturbance of habitat (the scrub replacing previous vegetation), over-grazing of pasture, and the absence of a positive water and land management strategy.
The loss of mangrove is most likely due to changes in drainage (the airstrip at Anones removed the outlet of the lagoon), erosion, and salinity. Although the part attributable to direct Naval action may be disputed, the presence of the Navy prevents an island-wide conservation and land-use program.
b. Destruction of marine resources. The clearest evidence for this destruction is the decline in fish catch over the years. The Navy impact statement also shows that impacted areas had only about 60% of the numbers of fish and 84% of the number of species of non-impacted areas. Since the impacted areas are also areas of restricted fishing (hence presumably reduced mortality) even no change in numbers would suggest harmful impact. The direct experience of the fishermen indicates a marked decline in catch, while the kill due to explosives landing in the water, loss of mangroves or lagoon habitats, may each contribute.
c. Unexploded ordinance is another kind of habitat degradation. The absence of a technology suitable for rehabilitation of such land suggests that the Navy has never seriously considered the possibility of moving out of its present training areas.
4. Intervention in the Political and Social Life of Vieques
Since the direct health and safety, economic and environmental impacts of the Navy inevitable produced protest, it was also inevitable that the Navy should act to protect its investment in Vieques. Various activities aimed at winning friends, buying support, intimidating, spying on, or removing adversaries were undertaken in a patter reminiscent of the dirty tricks revealed after Watergate. But this kind of community action increases the resentment against the Navy in Vieques and in all of Puerto Rico, and makes further conflict inevitable.
The U.S. Navy is the dominant ecological and economic fact of life on Vieques. A good starting point is to presume that it influences all phenomena and where there is no clear explanation of something that explanation must be sought before a valid conclusion can be reached.
The whole Vieques/Navy system is a destructive and unstable one, and the only long-term viable solution is the complete withdrawal for the Navy from Vieques and the unconditional transfer of the property to the people of Vieques.
