Cooperation and consensus make for a nice change of pace for endangered species protection
Wayne Walker | 11:06 a.m. EDT August 14, 2013
ORIGINAL ARTICLE ON USATODAY.COM
There is a looming train wreck coming on the Southern Plains stretching from Texas to Colorado to New Mexico. In the middle of environmental and energy interests is the Lesser Prairie Chicken, a yellow crowned member of the Grouse family that engages in an elaborate courting “dance” every spring.
These chickens once covered a vast, five state range, but their population has been decimated by 90%, according to most estimates. The cause is no mystery. Over a century of land conversion from prairie to rangeland and cropland, and more recently the boom in oil, gas and wind energy on the plains has come at the direct expense of our signature prairie species.
So we face a classic “protect the environment” vs. “create jobs and economic growth” scenario. Unlike most clashes between these often competing interests, there is a solution to this one where both sides can get what they most want.
Here’s how: by adopting an already well-established process known as conservation banking.
According to the National Mitigation Banking Association, conservation banks are permanently protected lands that contain natural resource values for species that are threatened and endangered. Conservation banks function to offset damage to threatened and endangered species that occurred elsewhere.
Thus, if you damage the habitat for a protected species, or the species itself, you must compensate with additional improved habitat for that same species in the appropriate ecological region.
This process is regulated primarily by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS).
According to speciesbanking.com 117 conservation banks have already emerged in 12 states, and so far permanently protected and improved 119,575 of key habitat. Habitat credits for Gopher Tortoise and Florida Panthers, Fairy Shrimp and Garter Snakes, are all sold daily from conservation banks as mitigation for otherwise prohibited development.
This regulatory framework represents what is too often absent in environmental outcomes: a market based approach. Instead of relying solely on government agencies, taxpayers, and conservation-minded landowners to fund protection for threatened or endangered species, the protected habitats are funded by those who impair them.
Conservation banking firms will permit, partner with landowners and protect (risking capital in the process and giving added motivation to do it right) the proper areas up-front before any development related impacts occur. The conservation banker is then allowed to recoup his investment by selling these habitat credits to developers.
The plan — pending approval by the USFWS — could bring together competing environmental and economic growth forces. By allowing regulated impacts to the chicken and its habitat, thereby giving industry the certainty to operate in the region, the financial resources required to repopulate the species are thereby ensured.
If it is approved, my firm and others like it will be incentivized by the promise of a market and will assemble, restore, and protect, large strategically located permanent preserves for the repopulation.
The USFWS will specifically approve each conservation bank (one proposed project is over seventy square miles) based on third-party biological assessments of the tract’s existing and potential productivity as habitat.
As it stands today, there are two competing approaches for the protection of the bird — permanent and temporary land protection. While the final regulations could entail a mix of both, permanent protection clearly provides the greatest degree of assurance of success for the species and permanent transfer of liability for industry.
The most mature mitigation market in the country, and a template for the chicken, is designed to restore and protect wetlands and streams. Regulated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, unavoidable impacts to these ecosystems are allowed only if the damage is mitigated by the permanent protection of restored lands through a perpetual conservation easement. The logic of permanent easements is straightforward: Draining a wetland to build something is permanent — not temporary — and therefore the mitigation should also be permanent.
The same principle holds true for the chicken. Impacts to it and its habitat are both permanent – the offset should be as well.
As one who has spent his career in the private energy sector and has attended numerous meetings and workshops with government, energy and environmental groups on the chicken, it is clear the one thing all sides most want is certainty.
Government wants certainty that the chicken and its habitat will be protected and improved. Energy interests want certainty for the cost and timing of their regulatory compliance. Environmental and conservation groups want certainty of resource protection and regulatory compliance.
Conservation banking is the best way to insure this certainty and avoid a looming train wreck.
Wayne Walker is the president of Common Ground Capital in Edmond, Okla.