Military training lands are characterized by an unusually high density of threatened and endangered species. In the United States, the density of threatened and endangered species is 3 to 18 times greater on Department of Defense properties than on lands managed by other Federal land management agencies. In the German state of Bavaria, the Grafenwöhr and Hohenfels Training Areas support 2 to 3 times more threatened and endangered animal species per unit area than designated nature preservation areas, many of which lie in the Alps region which is known as a center of biodiversity in Europe. We hypothesize that the high density of threatened and endangered species on the training areas is due to the nature and non-uniform distribution of disturbances that occur there. We suggest that military disturbances replace, in part, natural disturbances that have been eliminated or reduced by well-intentioned land managers and public policy. The mosaic of disturbed and undisturbed habitats occurring on Army training lands provides a heterogeneous habitat capable of sustaining a greater number of species, many of which may be disturbance-dependent. To test the hypothesis, we evaluated the distribution of 8 threatened and endangered species (4 plants, 2 amphibians and 2 insects) in relation to maneuver disturbance at the Grafenwöhr and Hohenfels major training areas and the Freihölser Forst and Klosterforst local training areas. All 8 species exhibited varying degrees of dependence on maneuver disturbance; some required as much as 80-100% recent surface disturbance.