The Pros And Cons Of Conservation Banking

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Recommended: Literature review of wetland conservation

Conservation banking was modeled after the U.S. wetland mitigation banking system and the two programs share many similarities. However, unlike the wetland mitigation system, conservation offsets do not have a stated ‘no net loss’ goal, but instead have a species recovery goal. Both conservation and wetlands mitigation banks are privately or publicly owned lands which are protected and managed for its ecological value. By doing this, the bank sponsor generates habitat or wetland or stream credits to sell to developers or transportation departments who need to offset their impacts and comply with the legal requirements for the permitting of development or roadway projects. Both types of banks offer benefits to both the landowner that owns the natural resource and the developer that needs to purchase the credits. The landowner can take portions of their property that may have been considered unusable and turn it into an asset. The developer can streamline their permitting process by purchasing credits instead of implementing a mitigation plan themselves.
The first mitigation banking guidance was released in 1995 by the EPA and Corps of Engineers. The most recent wetland mitigation banking guidance was released in 2008. The idea behind both wetland mitigation banking and conservation banking is to provide compensation for unavoidable impacts to resources prior to the environmental impact taking place (FWS, 2003). Based on the rules set forth in section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act and section 404 of the Clean Water Act, wetland impacts are reduced by using the following sequence of steps: avoiding impacts, minimizing impacts, and as a last resort, mitigating for impacts. Although the Corps has enforced a mitigation policy to reg...

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...nks distinguish between preserved, restored, or created credits, conservation banks currently do not. The FWS’s federal guidance and California’s guidance do not state a preference for restored, enhanced, created, or preserved habitat, but approximately 94% of conservation bank credits are derived from preservation. Regulatory agencies often struggle with awarding credits for created wetland habitat due to performance risks and doubt about ecological value. Habitat creation for conservation banking has yet to be tested. Another issue of concern to conservation banking and preservation habitat is long-term management. Unless there is active management on areas where the ecosystem relies on it (e.g., controlled burning, invasive species control), using preservation for mitigation could lead to a net loss of habitat for a particular species. (Fox and Nino-Murcia, 2005)

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