WASHINGTON

--Each year, two of America's noblest raptors share the sky over a patch of Nevada desert: In springtime, the golden eagle arrives to nest at the Desert National Wildlife Refuge 20 miles north of the Las Vegas strip, while at other times of the year another aerial predator, the F-22 Raptor, launched from adjacent Nellis Air Force Base, takes to these same skies to train American fighter pilots.

Some may be surprised to learn that most of our nation's 561 national wildlife refuges, like Desert NWR, provide natural buffers against urbanization and other development, preserving open land and airspace necessary for military units to execute their vital training missions.

As Congress confronts the sequester and budget issues to follow, that synergy between Defense Department training areas and the National Wildlife Refuge System is threatened by the reality of NWRS budget cuts between $50 million and $100 million.

These cuts would have serious consequences for the NWRS' ability to protect habitat resources necessary for wildlife and human activities in the refuges, as well as for military readiness.

Two of the five goals of the Congressional Wildlife Refuge Caucus are to support adequate NWRS budgets and to support the strategic growth of the refuge system. Despite the efforts of this bipartisan caucus's 132 members from 41 states, Capitol Hill has repeatedly failed to appropriate the $900 million annually derived from offshore oil and gas leasing as promised under the Land and Water Conservation Fund. A portion of these funds would protect refuges that benefit not just wildlife but also, incidentally, military training areas.

The story of Desert NWR and Nellis AFB is just one example of a larger trend playing out nationwide, across the 150 million acres of our NWRS. For starters, 250 of our 561 wildlife refuges secure open space for the military by being located within 20 miles of a military installation.

About half of those same refuges also lie under military training routes and Special Use Airspace used for military training. Beyond that, an additional 197 refuges underlie both a military training route and Special Use Airspace beyond 20 miles from an installation. In total, 447 refuges, or about 80 percent of the refuges in the system, secure open space that is crucial to military training. And like Desert NWR, many refuges grapple with a growing list of challenges associated with people living and recreating close by.