Military installation land managers regularly face problems when they are called upon to incorporate threatened, endangered, and other declining or special interest plant and animal species into their management plans. Much of the problem has come about as a result of generally good on-site land management over the past 50 years, a time when surrounding civilian intensive land use changes destroyed millions of acres of habitat. Remaining populations are increasingly being restricted to the de-facto protection of military installations, resulting in conflicts between mission goals and species protection. This trend appears to be accelerating. Is there any way to spread the burden of managing and protecting these many species at risk? One route may be through the development of a Candidate Conservation Agreement (CCA) where multiple concerned groups and agencies all agree to certain goals and activities in furtherance of the success of the species. The US Army ERDC, Champaign, IL, has proposed the development of a CCA for the Gopher Tortoise, a declining species of the southeastern states. Present research is focused on specific issues important to the success of the tortoise, such as carrying capacity, population viability, individual and population health concerns, and even such needs as how best to sample populations to evaluate progress. Through these efforts, a series of procedures are being developed which may be uniformly applied by cooperating groups and agencies. The goal is to encourage better management leading to an increase in populations of the at-risk species, in this case the tortoise, in as many places outside the installation as possible. This would have the effect of spreading any potential burden for population maintenance broadly across a wide area, and decreasing the heavy dependence on military lands for population recovery.