Issues
NOTE: A new comment page on IPAA’s ESA Watch website is now live, featuring a complete list of IPAA comments on ESA related issues since the start of the campaign. Visit the page HERE.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service releases draft compensatory mitigation policy. In response to President Obama’s call to set clear best practices to “achieve strong environmental outcomes while encouraging development and providing services to the American people,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released a 148-page draft compensatory mitigation policy aimed at addressing the impacts of development on endangered species. The proposed mitigation policy is the first comprehensive treatment of compensatory mitigation under authority of the ESA to be issued by the service.
Fish and Wildlife states the goal of the draft policy is to provide a “broad umbrella policy under which more detailed Service policies or guidance documents covering specific activities involving mitigation may be issued.” As opposed to the “project-by-project” approach laid out in previous policies, this draft proposes a “landscape” methodology that includes conservation banking, habitat credit exchanges, in-lieu fee programs and permittee-responsible mitigation. According to Gary Frazer, FWS Assistant Director for Ecological Services, the “landscape-level approach” helps modernize the mitigation process and “meet the challenges posed by a growing human population, climate change and other human-induced threats, while still being compatible with today’s vital economic activity.” The policy also aims to improve consistency in applying compensatory mitigation as recommended or required by the ESA.
On May 9, 2016, IPAA submitted comments on the previous draft policy, requesting that the Service withdraw the plan unless re-proposed with significant changes. Comments on the updated draft are now due by October 17th and IPAA is preparing its submission to the agency. The Service expects the policy to be finalized by the end of the year.
Fish and Wildlife unveils seven year listing plan. Last Thursday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a seven-year plan to address a growing backlog of endangered and threatened species awaiting listing decisions. The agency will evaluate species status reviews using a newly formulated prioritization methodology instead of the previous category list system. The plan will help make decisions for roughly 320 species and move protection forward for 30 candidate species that have already been determined to warrant federal protection measures. One of the first species that will be considered is the lesser prairie chicken, whose “threatened” status was removed by court order last year.
FWS Director Dan Ashe said he expects the “achievable, grounded, science-based approach” to add increased transparency and predictability on upcoming listing actions. Still, some critics of the plan, like endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity Noah Greenwald, believe the plan “only begins to scratch the surface.” Listing decision delays have been a consistent challenge for the agency, due in large part to the large volume of petitions raised by groups like CBD and others. In fact, the workplan comes just one week after the CBD filed a formal notice of intent to sue the Service over the growing backlog and continued litigation pressure from environmental groups over the years to hasten the listing process. Read the workplan and listing workload on the ESA Watch site.
FWS bolsters peer review requirements for ESA decisions. On Wednesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a memo providing additional guidance to the agency’s 1994 peer review policy. The new policy requires all agency decisions on listings, reclassifications, delistings, critical habitat and draft recovery plans to be reviewed by “three or more objective and independent reviewers with expertise and/or experience relevant to the scientific questions and determinations addressed in our actions.”
The reviewers will need to consider whether the Service has “assembled and considered the best available scientific and commercial information,” whether the agency’s subsequent analysis “is correct and properly applied,” and whether the proposed actions are “reasonable in light of that information.” All of the relevant documents and data, as well as the reviewers’ recommendations and conflict-of-interest disclosures, must all be made available to the public.
“While our policy for scientific peer review has always been robust, we felt it could be improved,” Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe said in a statement. The Union of Concerned Scientists praised the guidance for separating science and policy, writing “The new policy takes a step forward in terms of safeguarding the science that informs endangered species listing decisions.”
In the News
The biggest danger to migratory birds in 2016? Cats. Iowa Public Radio. In the early 1900s, one of the most populous birds in the world, passenger pigeons, were hunted to extinction in the wild. The very last passenger pigeon, Martha, died in captivity in 1914. A few years later, the United States enacted the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a treaty that has paved the way for conservation efforts that have saved countless endangered bird species. Temple says the biggest modern threat to birds is one that will surprise many people. “The biggest threat? Cats. A non-native species to North America, free ranging cats kill over 2 billion birds a year. Far more than other human related deaths which include collisions, chemicals, and hunting.”
Ag secretary says private investment needed to help sage grouse. Associated Press. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced grants on Thursday for a pair of programs that will attempt to use private financing to conserve land across the Western U.S. as part of a sweeping effort to restore the greater sage grouse’s habitat. Vilsack told The Associated Press that such private sector investment is needed to supplement $400 million already spent under the agency’s sage grouse restoration initiative. Greater sage grouse live in 11 Western states. About 200,000 to 500,000 remain, down from a peak population of about 16 million.
Enviros seek ‘emergency’ lesser prairie chicken protections. E&E News (sub req’d). A coalition of environmental groups today asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to reverse course and list the lesser prairie chicken as an endangered species in need of immediate federal protection to survive. The 161-page petition filed by WildEarth Guardians, Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity asks for Endangered Species Act protections for the total lesser prairie chicken population, which was removed in July from the ESA list following a federal court order. But for two distinct population segments — the shinnery oak prairie segment along the Texas-New Mexico border and the sand sagebrush prairie segment in Colorado and western Kansas — the groups want the Fish and Wildlife Service to issue an “emergency” endangered listing “at the soonest possible time.”
BLM sage grouse plans not limiting development – report. E&E News (sub req’d). The federal greater sage grouse conservation plans finalized last year have not hampered oil and natural gas leasing and development on public lands in the West, according to a report by a watchdog group that was sharply criticized by the industry as misleading. The federal sage grouse plans finalized in September 2015 also have not negatively affected renewable energy development, livestock grazing and outdoor recreation; the Bureau of Land Management in the past year has approved “dozens” of permits “for a wide array of commercial recreation activities,” according to the report, released today by the Western Values Project.
The Administration’s end-of-summer push on compensatory mitigation policy. Holland & Hart LLP (Briefing). The proposed policy on compensatory mitigation is nominally focused on species protected under the ESA, but the Service appears to be taking a broad view of the policy’s scope, stating that it will be applied to “achieve the best conservation outcomes for listed, proposed, and at-risk species through effective management of the risks associated with compensatory mitigation.” The proposed policy would apply to every form of compensatory mitigation, including permittee-responsible mitigation, conservation banking, in-lieu fee programs, habitat credit exchanges, and other third-party mitigation arrangements.
Promoters of cleaner electric grid zapped by roadblocks. E&E News (sub req’d). Building new high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) power lines in the United States will help the nation’s aging power grid handle more renewable energy. It also promises to sharply cut emissions that cause climate change. But the U.S. electricity transmission system is saddled with a sprawling regulatory process that vets proposed long-distance projects at a glacial pace. While some experts argued that climate change would be a much greater danger to the sage grouse, eagles and other birds under study, Power Company of Wyoming agreed to relocate its entire wind project out of the state-designated sage grouse core areas.
BLM sage grouse guidelines will bury land users in paperwork. Elko Daily Free Press (Column). The Bureau of Land Management this past week issued eight guideline memos instructing federal land managers in 11 Western states as to how they are to carry out policies intended to protect greater sage grouse — a move that threatens to bury ranchers, miners, oil and gas explorers and construction companies under a mountain of paperwork and impose lengthy delays, while doing little to actually protect the birds.
