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Regional Credit Market for Species Conservation: Developing the Fort Hood Recovery Credit System
Abstract
In 2005, Fort Hood Military Reservation (Fort Hood, TX, USA) staff sought assistance from the Texas Department of Agriculture and several partner organizations to develop a mitigation approach that included the ability to mitigate temporary impacts to habitat through temporary mitigation agreements with private landowners. Fort Hood, which is home to the largest known population of the federally endangered golden-cheeked warbler (Setophaga chrysoparia; warbler), was at that time facing increased demands for military training activities that had the potential to disturb, but not likely destroy warbler habitat. Texas Department of Agriculture assembled an advisory committee and 3 stakeholder committees (science, economics, and policy), and tasked them with developing a cost-efficient system that provided the desired mitigation, while also contributing to the recovery of the warbler. The resulting Recovery Credit System (RCS) enabled Fort Hood to purchase both permanent and temporary credits that represent habitat conservation actions from private landowners for use to mitigate impacts on the installation. We describe our experiences developing and implementing the RCS and briefly discuss new regional credit markets now underway or in development in Utah, USA, for the Utah prairie dog (Cynomys parvidens); in Texas for the dunes sagebrush lizard (Sceloporus arenicolus), golden-cheeked warbler, black-capped vireo (Vireo atricapilla), and lesser prairie chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus); and in Colorado, USA, for the greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus).
... Second, they are centralized exchanges that are overseen by independent administrators who are not regulators, but may receive approval for compensatory mitigation from regulatory entities. Third, they may exist in the absence of a mandatory mitigation policy (Bean, 2017;Galik et al., 2017;Pindilli & Casey, 2015;Wolfe et al., 2012). We focus on these habitat exchange programs because they have been touted as a more flexible and practical offset approach in the face of global environmental change (which could reduce the efficacy of permanent conserva-tion strategies; D' Aloia et al., 2019) and in areas where environmental regulation or land-use restriction is unpalatable politically (see Section 2; Bean, 2017;Galik et al., 2017;Wolfe et al., 2012). ...
... Third, they may exist in the absence of a mandatory mitigation policy (Bean, 2017;Galik et al., 2017;Pindilli & Casey, 2015;Wolfe et al., 2012). We focus on these habitat exchange programs because they have been touted as a more flexible and practical offset approach in the face of global environmental change (which could reduce the efficacy of permanent conserva-tion strategies; D' Aloia et al., 2019) and in areas where environmental regulation or land-use restriction is unpalatable politically (see Section 2; Bean, 2017;Galik et al., 2017;Wolfe et al., 2012). ...
... The first-the Goldencheeked Warbler (Setophaga chrysoparia) Recovery Credit System-was initiated in 2006 to offset effects of military training at Fort Hood (Killeen, Texas) on the warbler, which is listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. This program engaged private landowners in 10−25-year financial agreements, in increments of 5 years, to improve Golden-cheeked Warbler habitat on their properties (Wolfe et al., 2012; Figure 1). ...
Habitat exchange programs, a form of biodiversity offsetting, aim to compensate for negative impacts in one area by conservation in another. A newer subset of habitat exchange programs includes programs that have three distinct characteristics: they allow for temporary (as opposed to only permanent) credits; they are centralized and overseen by nonregulatory, independent administrators; and they exist in the absence of mandatory mitigation policy. As a result, these programs may be relatively flexible and practical in areas where environmental regulation is unpalatable politically. We synthesized gray and peer‐reviewed literature to evaluate these programs’ strengths and shortcomings. On the basis of our synthesis, we suggest that temporary conservation credits in habitat exchanges could encourage participation of landowners in conservation and enable programs to respond to environmental change. However, temporary credits can lead to trade‐offs between flexibility and uncertainty. Moreover, there is little evidence that these habitat exchange programs have benefited target species, and many challenges associated with offsetting programs persist. Newer forms of habitat exchange programs may have potential to achieve no net loss or net gains of biodiversity to a greater extent than other forms of offsetting, but this potential has not yet been realized.
... The banks can be both private (owned and managed by private actors) or public/private (consisting of a partnership between the private actor and the public state or county owning the land) (Koh et al., 2019). Mitigation agreements and corresponding credits can be either temporary or permanent (Wolfe et al., 2012). ...
We analyze the development of biodiversity offsetting governance through a research-weaving approach. Here, we combine information from a systematized review of the literature and a qualitative analysis of the institutional developments in different world regions. Through this triangulation, we synthesize and map the different developmental streams of biodiversity offsetting governance around the globe over the last four decades. We find that there is a global mainstreaming of core principles such as avoidance, no-net-loss, and a mitigation hierarchy, as well as pooling and trading of offsets for unavoidable residual damages. Furthermore, we can observe an ongoing diversification of institutional designs and actors involved. Together this constitutes an emerging regime complex of biodiversity offsetting governance that comes with both a set of shared norms and a growing institutional complexity. While this may imply institutional innovation through diversification and policy experimentation, it also raises questions regarding the effectiveness of offsetting practices.
... One voluntary conservation approach receiving particular attention in recent years is a type of habitat market known as a "habitat exchange." Habitat exchanges are either under development or have been developed as a habitat conservation measure for at-risk species in several areas of the country (EDF, 2015a; Wolfe et al., 2012). In these types of markets, willing participants generate habitat "credits" by creating and protecting a new unit of habitat or by protecting a unit of existing habitat that could otherwise be lost (Bull et al., 2013). ...
New tools are being deployed to address the continued decline of species at risk of becoming threatened or endangered. One approach receiving increased attention is the habitat exchange, or the use of a market-based, landscape-scale approach to protect or restore habitat in one place to offset impacts elsewhere. Although considerable resources have been devoted to the establishment of habitat exchanges over the past several years, actual implementation of transactions through habitat exchanges have been limited. As we argue here, important lessons have been slow to translate to habitat exchanges from other planning arenas. We briefly outline how the decision sciences, particularly structured decision making, and other planning processes − such as those governing electricity infrastructure development − can provide examples to facilitate the use of habitat exchanges as a viable and scalable conservation tool. We emphasize the challenge of translating theory to application, and note the importance of cross-fertilization of knowledge and experience across traditional disciplinary bounds.
... In our study, a hexagon was originally considered protected if greater than 50% of the hexagon intersected 2012 conservation and recreation lands and/or 2010 Department of Defense lands. This is not entirely accurate because programs are currently in place that allow for the mitigation of habitat take on military lands (Wolfe et al., 2012). Further, many of the conservation and recreation lands might not actively manage for warblers and therefore might inadvertently remove warbler habitat to achieve alternate objectives. ...
Population viability analyses provide a quantitative approach that seeks to predict the possible future status of a species of interest under different scenarios and, therefore, can be important components of large-scale species' conservation programs. We created a model and simulated range-wide population and breeding habitat dynamics for an endangered woodland warbler, the golden-cheeked warbler (Setophaga chrysoparia). Habitat-transition probabilities were estimated across the warbler's breeding range by combining National Land Cover Database imagery with multistate modeling. Using these estimates , along with recently published demographic estimates, we examined if the species can remain viable into the future given the current conditions. Lastly, we evaluated if protecting a greater amount of habitat would increase the number of warblers that can be supported in the future by systematically increasing the amount of protected habitat and comparing the estimated terminal carrying capacity at the end of 50 years of simulated habitat change. The estimated habitat-transition probabilities supported the hypothesis that habitat transitions are unidirectional, whereby habitat is more likely to diminish than regenerate. The model results indicated population viability could be achieved under current conditions, depending on dispersal. However, there is considerable uncertainty associated with the population projections due to parametric uncertainty. Model results suggested that increasing the amount of protected lands would have a substantial impact on terminal carrying capacities at the end of a 50-year simulation. Notably, this study identifies the need for collecting the data required to estimate demographic parameters in relation to changes in habitat metrics and population density in multiple regions, and highlights the importance of establishing a common definition of what constitutes protected habitat, what management goals are suitable within those protected areas, and a standard operating procedure to identify areas of priority for habitat conservation efforts. Therefore, we suggest future efforts focus on these aspects of golden-cheeked warbler conservation and ecology.
... The FHMR is an 87 890-ha contiguous property located in Bell and Coryell Counties, Texas, USA. The property is managed by the US Army, with the primary goal to facilitate training of US military personnel (reviewed in Wolfe et al., 2012). ...
Understanding the factors that drive population dynamics is fundamental to species conservation and management. Since the golden-cheeked warbler Setophaga chrysoparia was first listed as endangered, much effort has taken place to monitor warbler abundance, occupancy, reproduction and survival. Yet, despite being directly related to local population dynamics, movement rates have not been estimated for the species. We used an integrated population model to investigate the relationship between immigration rate, fledging rate, survival probabilities and population growth rate for warblers in central Texas, USA. Furthermore , using a deterministic projection model, we examined the response required by vital rates to maintain a viable population across varying levels of immigration. Warbler abundance fluctuated with an overall positive trend across years. In the absence of immigration, the abundance would have decreased. However, the population could remain viable without immigration if both adult and juvenile survival increased by almost half or if juvenile survival more than doubled. We also investigated the response required by fledging rates across a range of immigration in order to maintain a viable population. Overall, we found that immigration was required to maintain warbler target populations, indicating that warbler conservation and management programs need to be implemented at larger spatial scales than current efforts to be effective. This study also demonstrates that by using limited data within integrated population models, biologists are able to monitor multiple key demographic parameters simultaneously to gauge the efficacy of strategies designed to maximize warbler viability in a changing landscape.
Conservation across jurisdictional boundaries can help achieve recovery goals for species at risk, provide funding for conservation actions by private landowners, and reduce regulatory burdens. Habitat crediting programs, a type of offsite mitigation, are a relatively new form of cross-boundary conservation. To better understand the current status of these programs and their perceived strengths and shortcomings for species conservation, credit providers (e.g., private landowners), and credit purchasers (e.g., federal agencies), we surveyed the literature and online resources, and engaged with a small group of professionals who have been closely involved with habitat crediting programs. From these resources and interactions, we identified nine habitat crediting programs in the United States. Those engaged in these programs suggest that the programs may provide regulatory relief, a positive return on investment for participants, and benefits to species conservation in some contexts. However, economic and institutional challenges include up-front costs of participation and divergent preferences for short-term or permanent contracts. Furthermore, programs tend to measure ecological success by monitoring habitat amount and condition rather than species' abundance, survival, and reproduction. As such, monitoring is not always sufficiently rigorous to assess ecological outcomes and account for environmental change. We suggest that habitat crediting programs hold promise for meeting multiple objectives for at-risk species, landowners, and developers, but their potential often is hampered by high transaction costs and a lack of the ecological information needed to evaluate success.
Early action refers to activities undertaken prior to a regulatory program or generation of services prior to mitigation of impacts elsewhere. In U.S. environmental markets, early action could reduce lags in environmental performance, improve outcomes, and encourage innovation in mitigation approaches. Multiple tools have emerged for encouraging early action in environmental markets. Several tools have also been deployed in markets, providing valuable insight into their function. This paper presents a systematic review of early action tools and describes their use in wetland and stream mitigation, species and habitat banking, greenhouse gas mitigation, and water quality trading. It finds that incentives necessary to motivate sellers differ from those motivating buyers. The tool or approach best suited to encourage early action also varies as conditions change. Anecdotal evidence suggests the potential for benefits to accrue from early action, but additional data are needed to inform the use of specific tools.
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) faces a shortage of incentives to motivate the scale of conservation activities necessary to address and reverse the decline of at-risk species. A recent policy proposal attempts to change this by allowing landowners to generate credits for voluntary prelisting conservation activities. We explore the proposed policy from the perspective of potential participants. We find that uncertainty present in species listing processes complicates the decision to undertake conservation activities, leading to less conservation being supplied than when a listing decision is certain, while also delaying implementation until late in the listing determination process. Incentives created by the prelisting policy may likewise push species status closer to a listing threshold and thus exacerbate uncertainty in the listing process. To counter this tendency and encourage a more efficient allocation of conservation activity, early-actor bonuses, weighted credits, or limited windows of eligibility could be used to target or place increased premiums on early conservation activity. Though these findings are most directly applicable to the specific prelisting policy considered here, they are nonetheless relevant to a wider array of conservation policies that seek to encourage voluntary early action in advance of a regulatory alternative.
When species are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, there are often real or perceived negative consequences for landowners that may produce perverse incentives and lead to the elimination rather than protection of habitat for the species on private land. In Texas, where approximately 95% of the land is privately owned, the listing of one species and the potential listing of another led to the creation of two innovative programs aimed at incentivizing landowners to protect and improve habitat for the two species: Recovery Credit System for the Golden-Cheeked Warbler and Conservation Recovery Award System for the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard. Both programs were based on multistakeholder collaborations that included federal and state agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and private landowners, and which resulted in quasimarket mechanisms for the voluntary protection of habitat by landowners for the species of concern. Key components of both programs included confidentiality of landowner conservation agreements with the state’s wildlife management agency and the creation of not-for profit organizations to implement contracts with landowners and disseminate payments for habitat conservation actions to landowners. These two programs have also informed efforts to protect the Lesser Prairie-Chicken and Greater Sage-Grouse, which are under threat on private land in multiple states. Seven lessons learned from protection programs for the four species presented in this article provide useful guidelines for the conservation of other at-risk species on private land elsewhere.
Central to wildlife conservation and management is the ability to forecast how species will behave and persist under future environmental conditions. To accomplish this, biologists must have a deep understanding of factors that impact population dynamics for a species of interest at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. My dissertation research is centered on updating and extending our knowledge on golden-cheeked warbler (Setophaga chrysoparia) population dynamics and habitat conservation at multiple spatial scales. Specifically, I examined warbler habitat change, survival, immigration, productivity, and population dynamics using a variety of contemporary statistical and geospatial analyses. Using Landsat imagery, I provided quantitative evidence for a large-scale reduction in total warbler breeding habitat, which became more fragmented across the warbler’s breeding range. I estimated survival probabilities using 20 years of capture-resight data that suggest previous warbler population models were overly optimistic with respect to adult survival. Further, I found no strong evidence for spatial variation in survival or temporal patterns in survival that relate to observed warbler population dynamics. Using long-term monitoring data, I found immigration was important to stabilize local warbler populations, indicating conservation and management plans need to be implemented at a larger spatial scale. Lastly, I used these estimates to program a range-wide, spatially explicit population model to project warbler population and habitat dynamics into the foreseeable future. The model results indicated population viability could be achieved under current conditions, and that increasing the amount of protected lands would have a substantial impact on warbler carrying capacities at the end of a 50-year simulation. Overall, this research will help guide conservation decision making for the golden-cheeked warbler, at the local and range-wide scale.
Department of Defense (DOD) lands in the arid western United States provide important habitat for many, threatened and endangered species (TES). We explore the status of these species and evaluate threats to their survival and recovery. Thirty-two military sites located in tire Chihuahuan, Sonoran, Mojave, and Great Basin deserts collectively support 34 listed and candidate species and one delisted species. We assess the relationship between the status of these species and land degradation by categorizing species according to major habitat type and enumerating the major threats to their survival and recovery. Habitat loss and degradation due to increasing human activities throughout the region arc the most significant factors is affecting these species. Urban and suburban development, agricultural conversion, and over-grazing are most important among Arid Grassland/Desert Scrub species, while hydrologic alternation is notable among Riparian and Aquatic species. Nonnative species impact TES through habitat modification, as well as direct predation and competion. Specific consecration issues are discussed for selected species. While military disturbances hare the potential to impact many of these species, poor water-shed management practices of the past and the influx of humans are primarily responsible for the current status of TES and the ecosystems upon which they depend. Their continued survival and recovery requires coordinated conservation activities at the regional level.
The Recovery Credit System is a framework for federal agencies to implement recovery measures for threatened and endangered species under which federal agencies may offset adverse effects of agency actions taken elsewhere for that species. The proof of concept was implemented at Fort Hood Military Reservation. Developed by a working group, it allowed the Department of Defense to receive credit for recovery measures implemented by private landowners to offset adverse effects from training activities pertaining to the conservation of the Golden-cheeked Warbler (Dendroica chrysoparia). The purpose of this evaluation was to provide an objective and thorough evaluation of the three-year proof of concept for both the process and the intended impact and to assess the utility of the Recovery Credit System. To ensure independence, the evaluation team had no prior relationship with any stakeholder and recruited peer reviewers who were free of conflicts of interest. The evaluation team collected data from six sources to answer seven evaluation questions: a peer review panel of three independent scientists, all successful and unsuccessful landowner bids, program documents, habitat assessments on eight contracted sites, seventeen interviews with participating landowners, and twenty-four interviews with program operators, military personnel, and other stakeholders. Incorporating six sources ensured that at least three different sources plus relevant literature informed each evaluation question and the findings. The analytic strategy included descriptive statistics for quantitative variables (such as bid documents or site reviews) and a general inductive approach for qualitative data using the guidelines in Miles and Huberman (1995). Recommendations were generated at three levels to meet the information needs for multiple stakeholders: the Recovery Credit System that may be applied in other locations or for other species, the Recovery Credit System as applied to the Golden-cheeked Warbler, and for the proof of concept applied at Fort Hood Military Reservation.
Department of Defense (DOD) lands in the arid western United States provide important habitat for many threatened and endangered species (TES). We explore the status of these species and evaluate threats to their survival and recovery. Thirty-two military sites located in the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, Mojave, and Great Basin deserts collectively support 34 listed and candidate species and one delisted species. We assess the relationship between the status of these species and land degradation by categorizing species according to major habitat type and enumerating the major threats to their survival and recovery. Habitat loss and degradation due to increasing human activities throughout the region are the most significant factors is affecting these species. Urban and suburban development, agricultural conversion, and over-grazing are most important among Arid Grassland/Desert Scrub species, while hydrologic alternation is notable among Riparian and Aquatic species. Nonnative species impact TES through habitat modification, as well as direct predation and competion. Specific conservation issues are discussed for selected species. While military disturbances have the potential to impact many of these species, poor watershed management practices of the past and the influx of humans are primarily responsible for the current status of TES and the ecosystems upon which they depend. Their continued survival and recovery requires coordinated conservation activities at the regional level.
This study evaluated landowners' interests in enrolling in a hypothetical incentive program targeting endangered species recovery. Using data from structured interviews and s-urveys, we employed the reasoned action framework to predict landowners' behavioral intentions to enroll in a hypothetical program designed to provide habitat for two endangered songbirds in central Texas. Landowners with positive attitudes toward enrolling and who shared the program's land management objectives had the greatest intention to enroll. Additional behavioral indicators improved prediction and highlight the importance of incorporating landowner management goals into program design. Results suggest that the inclusion of ancillary measures of behavior can improve prediction of multi-attribute behaviors under the theory of reasoned action.
The US government has multiple responsibilities for the protection of endangered species, many of them stemming from its role
as the nation's largest landowner. To explore how endangered and imperiled species are distributed across the federal estate,
we carried out a geographic information system (GIS)-based analysis using natural heritage species occurrence data. In this
10-year update of a previous analysis, we found that the Department of Defense and the USDA Forest Service harbor more species
with formal status under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) than other US agencies. The densities of ESA status species and
imperiled species are at least three times higher on military lands—2.92 and 3.77, respectively, per 100,000 hectares—than
on any other agency's lands. Defense installations in Hawaii are especially significant; more than one-third of all ESA status
species on military lands are Hawaiian. These findings highlight the continued importance of public lands for the survival
of America's plant and animal species.
With scant evidence that market-based conservation works, argues Douglas
J. McCauley, the time is ripe for returning to the protection of nature
for nature's sake.
Ecosystem service approaches to conservation are being championed as a new strategy for conservation, under the hypothesis that they will broaden and deepen support for biodiversity protection. Where traditional approaches focus on setting aside land by purchasing property rights, ecosystem service approaches aim to engage a much wider range of places, people, policies, and financial resources in conservation. This is particularly important given projected intensification of human impacts, with rapid growth in population size and individual aspirations. Here we use field research on 34 ecosystem service (ES) projects and 26 traditional biodiversity (BD) projects from the Western Hemisphere to test whether ecosystem service approaches show signs of realizing their putative potential. We find that the ES projects attract on average more than four times as much funding through greater corporate sponsorship and use of a wider variety of finance tools than BD projects. ES projects are also more likely to encompass working landscapes and the people in them. We also show that, despite previous concern, ES projects not only expand opportunities for conservation, but they are no less likely than BD projects to include or create protected areas. Moreover, they do not draw down limited financial resources for conservation but rather engage a more diverse set of funders. We also found, however, that monitoring of conservation outcomes in both cases is so infrequent that it is impossible to assess the effectiveness of either ES or BD approaches.
• conservation
• conservation organizations
• protected area
• working landscapes
Describes all the mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians, and invertebrates in Texas that are listed as endangered or threatened by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Following a description of each animal and its habitat and life history, the author covers the threats to the animal, the reasons for its decline, recovery efforts on its behalf, and resources for more information and public involvement.
Receiving financial gains for protecting habitat may be necessary to proactively protect endangered species in the United States. Species conservation banking, the creation and trading of "credits" that represent biodiversity values on private land, is nearly a decade old. We detail the biological, financial, and political experience of conservation banking in the United States. We contacted agencies, nongovernmental organiza- tions, and bank owners and compiled comprehensive accounts of the experiences of current banks. There are 76 properties identified as conservation banks in the United States, but only 35 of these are established under a conservation banking agreement approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). The 35 official conservation banks cumulatively cover 15,987 ha and shelter a range of biodiversity, including more than 22 species listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Financial motives drove the establishment of 91% of con- servation banks, and the majority of for-profit banks are breaking even or making money. With credit prices ranging from 125,000/0.41 ha (1 acre), banking agreements offer financial incentives that compete with development and provide a business-based argument for conserving habitat. Although the bureaucracy of establishing an agreement with the USFWS was burdensome, 63% of bank owners reported they would set up another agreement given the appropriate opportunity. Increasing information sharing, decreasing the time to establish agreements (currently averaging 2.18 years), and reducing bureaucratic challenges can further increase the amount of private property voluntarily committed to banking. Although many ecological uncer- tainties remain, conservation banking offers at least a partial solution to the conservation versus development conflict over biodiversity.
Fort Hood Military Reservation is an 87,890-ha U.S. Army installation located in central Texas. It is one of the Army's premier installations, providing training facilities for the full range of mission requirements, including maneuver exercises for units up to brigade level, firing of live weapons, and aviation training. The presence of Federally listed endangered species on Fort Hood is a significant natural resource management challenge for the Army and Fort Hood. In accordance with the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended, the Army must assist recovery of all listed threatened and endangered (T&E) species and their habitats under the installation's management authority. Army Regulation (AR) 200-3 requires installations to prepare an Endangered Species Management Plan (ESMP) for all listed and proposed T&E species. The installation ESMP should be used as a tool to achieve conservation objectives for populations of listed and proposed T&E species and to minimize impacts on the training mission. AR 200-3 further encourages, but does not require, the development of ESMPs for all candidate species, and recommends that an integrated ESMP covering all T&E species be prepared if more than one such species occurs on an installation. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Biological Opinion for Fort Hood (March 2005) provides requirements and guidance for endangered species management on Fort Hood. This ESMP is written specifically for use by natural resource managers and leaders of training operations on Fort Hood to accomplish military training objectives while meeting conservation objectives for T&E species. The objective of this ESMP is to provide a comprehensive plan for maintaining and enhancing populations and habitats of Federally listed endangered species and species of concern on Fort Hood while maintaining mission readiness in a manner consistent with Army and Federal environmental regulations.
The Endangered Species Act, 1973 as amended, requires military installations to protect endangered birds and their habitats. Installations must fulfill their military training mission while limiting the associated impacts on birds. Currently, efforts to protect birds are hampered by a lack of knowledge about the actual and potential effects of military maneuvers. This literature review examines reports of the effects of military activities on birds and the effects of certain maneuver-like recreational and natural-resource activities that produce disturbances similar to those induced by troop and mechanized movements. Direct and indirect (habitat) effects are discussed, with emphasis on whether activities impacted avian behavior, reproduction, and community structure. The quality of existing information is summarized in terms of its value for establishing causal relations. The types of information needed are identified so installations can meet their dual responsibilities of effectively training combat troops and protecting endangered birds.
Policy advocacy is an issue regularly debated among conservation scientists. These debates have focused on intentional policy advocacy by scientists, but advocacy can also be unintentional. I define inadvertent policy advocacy as the act of unintentionally expressing personal policy preferences or ethical judgments in a way that is nearly indistinguishable from scientific judgments. A scientist may be well intentioned and intellectually honest but still inadvertently engage in policy advocacy. There are two ways to inadvertently engage in policy advocacy. First, a scientist expresses an opinion that she or he believes is a scientific judgment but it is actually an ethical judgment or personal policy preference. Second, a scientist expresses an opinion that he or she knows is an ethical judgment or personal policy preference but inadvertently fails to effectively communicate the nature of the opinion to policy makers or the public. I illustrate inadvertent advocacy with three examples: recovery criteria in recovery plans for species listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, a scientific peer review of a recovery plan for the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature's definition of threatened. In each example, scientists expressed ethical judgments or policy preferences, but their value judgments were not identified as such, and, hence, their value judgments were opaque to policy makers and the public. Circumstances suggest their advocacy was inadvertent. I believe conservation scientists must become acutely aware of the line between science and policy and avoid inadvertent policy advocacy because it is professional negligence, erodes trust in scientists and science, and perpetuates an ethical vacuum that undermines the rational political discourse necessary for the evolution of society's values. The principal remedy for inadvertent advocacy is education of conservation scientists in an effort to help them understand how science and values interact to fulfill the mission of conservation science.
In the United States, voluntary incentive programs that aid conservation of plant and wildlife species on private lands provide a structural solution to the problem of protecting endangered species by reducing costs and enhancing benefits to landowners. We explored the potential for incentives to encourage landowners to manage land cover for the benefit of endangered songbirds in central Texas (U.S.A.) by asking landowners to indicate their preferences for financial incentives, technical assistance, and regulatory assurances. We identified owners of potential songbird habitat and collected data in face-to-face interviews and self-administered questionnaires. We used a latent-class stated-choice model to identify 3 classes of landowners whose choices varied on the basis of their attitudes and perceived social norms: (1) strong positive attitude, perceived social pressure to participate, and willing to participate with relatively few incentives, (2) weak positive attitude, perceived no social pressure to participate, and required strongest incentives, and (3) negative attitude, perceived social pressure not to enroll, and unwilling to participate regardless of incentive structure. Given this heterogeneity in preferences, conservation incentives may increase management of land cover to benefit endangered species on private lands to some degree; however, exclusive reliance on incentives may be insufficient. Promoting conservation on private lands may be enhanced by integrating incentives into an approach that incorporates other strategies for conservation, including social networks and collaborative processes that reinforce social norms.
In recent years, scientists have begun to focus on the idea that healthy, functioning ecosystems provide essential services to human populations, ranging from water purification to food and medicine to climate regulation. Lacking a healthy environment, these services would have to be provided through mechanical means, at a tremendous economic and social cost.Nature and the Marketplace examines the controversial proposition that markets should be designed to capture the value of those services. Written by an economist with a background in business, it evaluates the real prospects for various of nature's marketable services to ââ¬Åturn profitsââ¬? at levels that exceed the profits expected from alternative, ecologically destructive, business activities. The author: describes the infrastructure that natural systems provide, how we depend on it, and how we are affecting it explains the market mechanism and how it can lead to more efficient resource use looks at key economic activities -- such as ecotourism, bioprospecting, and carbon sequestration -- where market forces can provide incentives for conservation examines policy options other than the market, such as pollution credits and mitigation banking considers the issue of sustainability and equity between generations .Nature and the Marketplace presents an accessible introduction to the concept of ecosystem services and the economics of the environment. It offers a clear assessment of how market approaches can be used to protect the environment, and illustrates that with a number of cases in which the value of ecosystems has actually been captured by markets.The book offers a straightforward business economic analysis of conservation issues, eschewing romantic notions about ecosystem preservation in favor of real-world economic solutions. It will be an eye-opening work for professionals, students, and scholars in conservation biology, ecology, environmental economics, environmental policy, and related fields.
A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, Politics of Nature does nothing less than establish the conceptual context for political ecology--transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned. Bruno Latour announces his project dramatically: "Political ecology has nothing whatsoever to do with nature, this jumble of Greek philosophy, French Cartesianism and American parks." Nature, he asserts, far from being an obvious domain of reality, is a way of assembling political order without due process. Thus, his book proposes an end to the old dichotomy between nature and society--and the constitution, in its place, of a collective, a community incorporating humans and nonhumans and building on the experiences of the sciences as they are actually practiced.
In a critique of the distinction between fact and value, Latour suggests a redescription of the type of political philosophy implicated in such a "commonsense" division--which here reveals itself as distinctly uncommonsensical and in fact fatal to democracy and to a healthy development of the sciences. Moving beyond the modernist institutions of "mononaturalism" and "multiculturalism," Latour develops the idea of "multinaturalism," a complex collectivity determined not by outside experts claiming absolute reason but by "diplomats" who are flexible and open to experimentation.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: What Is to Be Done with Political Ecology?
1. Why Political Ecology Has to Let Go of Nature
First, Get Out of the Cave
Ecological Crisis or Crisis of Objectivity?
The End of Nature
The Pitfall of "Social Representations" of Nature
The Fragile Aid of Comparative Anthropology
What Successor for the Bicameral Collective?
2. How to Bring the Collective Together
Difficulties in Convoking the Collective
First Division: Learning to Be Circumspect with Spokespersons
Second Division: Associations of Humans and Nonhumans
Third Division between Humans and Nonhumans: Reality and Recalcitrance
A More or Less Articulated Collective
The Return to Civil Peace
3. A New Separation of Powers
Some Disadvantages of the Concepts of Fact and Value
The Power to Take into Account and the Power to Put in Order
The Collective's Two Powers of Representation
Verifying That the Essential Guarantees Have Been Maintained
A New Exteriority
4. Skills for the Collective
The Third Nature and the Quarrel between the Two "Eco" Sciences
Contribution of the Professions to the Procedures of the Houses
The Work of the Houses
The Common Dwelling, the Oikos
5. Exploring Common Worlds
Time's Two Arrows
The Learning Curve
The Third Power and the Question of the State
The Exercise of Diplomacy
War and Peace for the Sciences
Conclusion: What Is to Be Done? Political Ecology!
Summary of the Argument (for Readers in a Hurry...)
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
From the book: What is to be done with political ecology? Nothing. What is to be done? Political ecology! All those who have hoped that the politics of nature would bring about a renewal of public life have asked the first question, while noting the stagnation of the so-called "green" movements. They would like very much to know why so promising an endeavor has so often come to naught. Appearances notwithstanding, everyone is bound to answer the second question the same way. We have no choice: politics does not fall neatly on one side of a divide and nature on the other. From the time the term "politics" was invented, every type of politics has been defined by its relation to nature, whose every feature, property, and function depends on the polemical will to limit, reform, establish, short-circuit, or enlighten public life. As a result, we cannot choose whether to engage in it surreptitiously, by distinguishing between questions of nature and questions of politics, or explicitly, by treating those two sets of questions as a single issue that arises for all collectives. While the ecology movements tell us that nature is rapidly invading politics, we shall have to imagine - most often aligning ourselves with these movements but sometimes against them - what a politics finally freed from the sword of Damocles we call nature might be like.
While intended to increase the habitat available to endangered species, the restrictions of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) increase the costs of harboring an endangered species to private landowners and create incentives for private landowners to reduce habitat. This paper illustrates the incentive for habitat destruction with a simple model of private land use under the ESA, and uses it to predict the effects of changes in policy or biological conditions on private landowner incentives. Many anecdotal accounts and recent empirical research support the predictions of the model. Because of the ESA’s perverse incentives, many have proposed replacing the punitive regulations of the ESA with positive incentives for habitat creation, including takings compensation, negligence compensation rules, tradable development rights, and land purchase programs. The paper concludes by reviewing economic analysis of these proposals’ effectiveness.
Human institutions—ways of organizing activities—affect the resilience of the environment. Locally evolved institutional arrangements
governed by stable communities and buffered from outside forces have sustained resources successfully for centuries, although
they often fail when rapid change occurs. Ideal conditions for governance are increasingly rare. Critical problems, such as
transboundary pollution, tropical deforestation, and climate change, are at larger scales and involve nonlocal influences.
Promising strategies for addressing these problems include dialogue among interested parties, officials, and scientists; complex,
redundant, and layered institutions; a mix of institutional types; and designs that facilitate experimentation, learning,
and change.
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Environmental issues for the 90s: golden‐cheeked warblers and yellowfin tuna
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Smith, E. E. 1995. Environmental issues for the 90s: golden-cheeked warblers and yellowfin tuna. Maine Law Review 47:345–363.
Endangered species act fee-based mitigation arrangements
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Politics of nature Selling out on nature
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Proactive habitat conserva-tion. Pages 286–295 in
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Measuring up: synchronizing biodiversity measurement systems for markets and other incentive programs. A report funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Environmental Markets
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Willamette Partnership. 2011. Measuring up: synchronizing biodiversity measurement systems for markets and other incentive programs. A report funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Environmental Markets. Willamette Partnership, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA. Associate Editor: Morrison. Wolfe et al. Recovery Credit System for Species Conservation
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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [USFWS]. 2005. Biological opinion on
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Hearing before the Subcommittee on Department Operations and Nutrition of the Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, 103rd Congress, 2nd session
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USFWS] and National Marine Fisheries Service [NMFS] 1998 Final ESA Section 7 Consultation Handbook 4-50
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