this book is the result of a lifelong interest in bio logy as well as military history. Premodern warfare and animals have always fascinated me, but I never thought about examining armed forces from an environmental point of view until the summer of 2009. At that time I visited the military domains known as the “Kamp van Beverlo” with other members of an environmentalist youth movement, the Jeugdbond voor Natuur en Milieu (JNM), and observed to my astonishment that military training exercises made the sur vival of rare animal and plant species possible.