760 acres in San Diego and Imperial counties will be transferred to the Navy for a three-year National Defense Area to support border security and reduce illegal-use impacts.
Let’s start with this: I’m not a fan of the government – federal or state – transferring public lands out of public hands. EVER.
The Interior Department is handing roughly 760 acres of public land in San Diego and Imperial counties to the Navy for a three-year transfer to establish a National Defense Area in support of border security operations. The designated area stretches from the western edge of the Otay Mountain Wilderness to about a mile west of the California–Arizona line, a corridor officials say sees heavy illegal crossing activity and the attendant strain on the landscape.
This is a short-term, targeted move: the Navy will use the ground to bolster operational capacity to close long-standing security gaps. Interior leaders framed the action as consistent with broader priorities to strengthen national defense and to curb unlawful use that damages public lands. The area itself has a long legal pedigree — it was first set aside in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt for border protection purposes — and the department says the transfer revives that original purpose while keeping the action bounded in time.
Officials emphasized that the Interior and the Navy coordinated to make the land transfer lawful and narrowly focused. The stated rationale is practical: by improving operational options in a concentrated corridor, the agencies expect to both tighten security and reduce the ecological harm that follows repeated, sustained illegal activity. In plain terms, sustained human traffic and ad hoc camps in remote canyons have degraded soils, vegetation, and wildlife habitat; the Navy’s presence is being pitched as a way to limit those pressures while the security mission is underway.
For people who use or care for public lands in the region, the change will be noticeable: a short-term shift in jurisdiction, new restrictions tied to the National Defense Area, and an emphasis on operational activity rather than public recreation. The transfer is limited to three years, and agency officials say it is a time-bound tool to address both security and environmental problems in a high-traffic border corridor.
A press release that doesn’t really detail the transfer can be found HERE.