Marketplaces & Programs for Preemptive Conservation Action | United States
American Forest Foundation, Longleaf Alliance, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and World Resources Institute
Prior to becoming endangered under government regulation, a species can be perceived as having little value, and consequently of low priority to society. Yet once a species becomes endangered, it can appear to take on a nearly infinite value: It must be protected at any expense, and the costs of protection borne by individuals and society are often significant. The result can be millions of dollars spent on lawsuits and significant drains on agency capacity. Citizens’ livelihoods can be negatively affected by regulatory species protection. Some landowners embrace a “shoot, shovel, and shut up” attitude that results in losses of threatened and endangered species as a means of avoiding government interference with land use or economic activity. Recovery of an endangered species often involves large sums of money spent on reactive actions to recover a species on the brink of extinction. From spotted owls to wolves to red-cockaded woodpeckers, the story is similar. The incentives for environmental stewardship are, all too often, not in place. We are developing a complementary model: creating a voluntary science-based marketplace where credits can be bought and sold prior to any regulatory trigger, resulting in cost-effective net gains for the protection of biological diversity. We are currently focused on the imperiled gopher tortoise in the southeast United States.
Longleaf pine forests, rich in biological diversity, once covered 90 million acres in the southeast United States. Due to development, habitat conversion, non-native species, and fire suppression, a mere three million acres are standing today. Consequently, many species have declined, including the imperiled gopher tortoise. Growing to over a foot long, gopher tortoises are famous for their ability to dig large burrows that can be 30 feet in length. Frogs, snakes, insects, and owls use these burrows for shelter, deeming the gopher tortoise a keystone species in longleaf pine forests. The gopher tortoise lives in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The US government has listed the gopher tortoise threatened under the Endangered Species Act in the western part of its range, while it is a candidate species in the remainder of its distribution.
Private citizens own over 80% of the land in the southeastern United States. Consequently, the greatest potential for the protection of the gopher tortoise and longleaf pine forests lies in the hands of private landowners. Successful programs must incentivize private landowners to conserve and manage gopher tortoise habitat.
Advanced Conservation Strategies and its partners are developing a program where gopher tortoise habitat credits can bought and sold on a voluntary basis prior to the species becoming formally protected by the US Government. Preemptive conservation actions, before formal government regulation, are more efficient, less contentious, and more cost-effective. Individuals or institutions that foresee having impacts on gopher tortoise habitat can buy habitat credits to offset those impacts, and individuals or institutions who own appropriate land can engage in management practices that qualify them to sell habitat credits for a profit.
In order to generate demand for protection of gopher tortoises, we are developing two parallel marketplaces that incentivize the purchase of gopher tortoise habitat credits on a voluntary basis, prior to any requirements by government regulation. Government agencies are under increasing pressure to mitigate their environmental impacts even in absence of legal requirements. The Department of Defense faces challenges as it strives to balance base consolidation and the need to maintain military readiness with environmental sustainability. Likewise, the Department of Transportation must balance transportation infrastructure with potential environmental impacts. We are working with these government agencies to innovate cost-effective solutions to achieve this balance by offering them a marketplace to offset their environmental impacts on gopher tortoises and longleaf pine forests. In exchange for mitigating their environmental impacts in advance, we hope to offer those agencies assurances that purchased habitat credits are viable if they are legally required under any future government regulations.
Leveraging mainstream marketing techniques, we are developing a second marketplace that focuses on generating demand for gopher tortoise habitat credits by the general public. Companies could purchase credits as part of their sustainability strategy, NGOs could purchase credits as part of their investment strategy, and the general public could purchase credits out of desire to protect part of their natural heritage. Unlike other investments in the environmental sector, a marketplace for gopher tortoise habitat credits is outcome-based: the results are documented and delivered when the credits are bought and sold.
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