SCB Policy Blog

On July 12, the Society for Conservation Biology submitted formal comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on ways to improve voluntary conservation initiatives for declining and endangered species. Over half of the species protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) rely to some extent on habitat found on private or State-owned lands. Accordingly, there is a need to develop stronger incentives to promote conservation activities on these lands in order to benefit threatened and endangered species is urgent. In particular, SCB made the following specific comments and recommendations:

1. While it is important to create incentives for voluntary conservation actions, strengthening existing regulatory disincentives for non-compliance with the ESA is equally important.

2. All voluntary conservation programs including Habitat Conservation Plans (HCPs), Safe Harbor Agreements (SHAs), Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances (CCAAs), and Conservation Banks should be standardized to the fullest extent possible such that they are implemented consistently throughout the landscape in a transparent manner.

3. All voluntary conservation programs must result in a net conservation benefit for a species, both for declining species that may become listed in the future and for currently listed species.

4. For a net conservation benefit to be meaningful, it must be defined by a biologically-appropriate, scientifically based mitigation ratio of 2:1 in all cases (wherein two conservation “credits” must be generated to offset a single conservation “debit”).

5. All voluntary conservation incentives programs must include mandatory monitoring, verification, and self-reporting to be effective.

6. FWS should publish a directory of programs and provisions that can provide financial and technical assistance to landowners and managers who are considering undertaking voluntary conservation measures.

SCB’s full comments can be found here.

On July 5th, SCB submitted formal comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on the revised critical habitat of the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) under the Endangered Species Act.  The FWS is proposing to designate up to 13.9 million acres as critical habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO).  SCB strongly supports the full designation as proposed by FWS.  Unfortunately, the FWS is considering excluding up to five million acres, if not more, based on social or economic considerations. SCB’s comments note that these considerations are in conflict with the ESA’s best science mandate and that they could undermine not only the recovery of the NSO, but also the long-term effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act or all listed species. 

The NSO was listed as a threatened species in 1990, and 6.8 million acres of critical habitat was proposed for the owl in 1992.  This first critical habitat designation was challenged by the timber industry in court. In 2007, the FWS revised downward the NSO’s critical habitat to 5.8 million acres.  While the FWS’s 2012 proposal has identified 13.9 million acres of potential critical habitat, the FWS has proposed a variety of Alternatives that could reduce the final designated critical habitat to nine million acres. 

Equally troubling, the FWS is proposing that forestry “treatments” of less than 500 acres would not rise to the level of “destruction or adverse modification” of critical habitat.  SCB believes that such statements have the potential to improperly influence future consultations regarding activities in the owl’s critical habitat.  Finally, the FWS continues to embrace the concept of “active forestry” in the owl’s critical habitat without sufficient scientific validation.  FWS’s apparent decision to move forward with untested “active management” of federally owned forest lands at the landscape level prior to validation through scientifically designed experiements and peer-review represents a potentially serious lapse in the application of the scientific process.

In addition, the critical habitat proposal states that there may be even “greater exclusions” from the final critical habitat designation based on vaguely defined economic concerns.  SCB is concurrently filing comments on the FWS’s approach for analyzing the economic impacts of designating critical habitat, arguing that, while there will be substantial losses in ecosystem services and substantial harm to spotted owls, there will be virtually no tangible benefits if habitat is excluded from the final critical habitat designation based on these economic concerns.

To address the issue of the management of critical habitat more systematically, SCB has also filed a petition today with the FWS to revise and strengthen its regulations regarding the designation and protection of critical habitat.

Read SCB’s comments on the critical habitat proposal HERE.

On July 5, 2012, the Society for Conservation Biology submitted a formal petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) requesting that these agencies strengthen their regulations on critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act.

Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) requires that all agencies of the Federal government consult with FWS and NOAA (collectively the “Services”) on actions that could jeopardize the existence of threatened and endangered species or result in the “destruction or adverse modification” of a species’ critical habitat.  In 1986, the Services proposed a weak regulatory definition of the term “destruction or adverse modification,” that undercut the protective effects of critical habitat.  Despite the Services’ definition being held legally invalid by three separate Federal Courts of Appeals as far back as 2001, the Services have still not changed their legally invalid regulations.  SCB is proposing a new definition of these terms that has a clear scientific basis, and that will require the Services to consider and provide for the recovery, not just the survival, of threatened and endangered species.

SCB is also proposing changes to the Services’ regulations to ensure that the Services consider and address climate change and habitat connectivity in the context of species recovery when they designates critical habitat.  Finally, SCB is proposing that the Services adopt a strict timeline for processing petitions to designate critical habitat.  As of April 2011, critical habitat has only been designated for 604 or 44 percent of the 1,372 domestic species protected by the ESA.  The Services' ability to address this backlog would be significantly improved if they agreed to an objective timeline for designating critical habitat for those species which have not yet received critical habitat.

SCB is filing this petition concurrently with its comments regarding the FWS’s revised critical habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina).  The FWS is proposing to designate up to 13.9 million acres as critical habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO).  While this would be a positive step for the recovery of the NSO, unfortunately the FWS is simultaneously undermining the long-term effectiveness of critical habitat by including several policy decisions that could undercut the recovery of the NSO.  For example, the FWS is proposing that any logging project smaller than 500 acres would not represent “destruction or adverse modification” of spotted owl critical habitat, despite the fact that there is no scientific literature supporting this policy.  SCB’s proposed reforms of the ESA’s regulations would prohibit the FWS from chopping up the NSO’s critical habitat in an unscientific, high-risk manner.

This is the second petition filed by SCB in 2012 to reform, strengthen, and modernize the regulations that implement the ESA.  While the ESA remains one of the most comprehensive laws ever passed to prevent extinction, the regulations that implement the ESA have mostly stood unchanged since 1986, a year before the founding of the Society for Conservation Biology.  In late 2008, SCB briefed the Obama Transition team on a set of recommendations for improving the implementation of several U.S. laws including the ESA. Since then we have worked with the FWS and NOAA to address the reforms we suggested in 2008.

Read the petition to the Department of Interior and Department of Commerce HERE.

On July 5th, the North America Section of SCB submitted formal comments on the economic analysis of the benefits and impacts of the revised critical habitat proposal for the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina).  Despite the rapid advances in ecological economics to quantify environmental benefits and values, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has yet to develop methodologies for even general approximations of environmental benefits, commonly known as ecosystem services, when it makes decisions directly affecting the biodiversity such as the designation of critical habitat.  By failing to even attempt to quantify ecosystem services, the FWS is not employing the best available economic science regarding the benefits that endangered species and their critical habitat provide.  By failing to apply the best available economic science, FWS undervalues the economic benefits of critical habitat and overestimates the economic costs of designating such habitat, resulting in decisions that ultimately may lead to long-term harm to endangered species, the environment, and society.  SCB’s comments address the shortcomings of the FWS’s draft economic analysis for the revised critical habitat proposal for the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO), and provide a road map for how FWS can improve future economic analyses on decisions relating to the protection of biological diversity.

Section 4(b)(2) of the ESA gives the FWS the discretion to exclude habitat from a final critical habitat designation if it determines that the benefits of exclusion outweigh the benefits of specifying an area as critical habitat. In the draft proposal, the FWS has identified nearly 14 million acres of potential critical habitat for the NSO.  However, FWS is considering excluding some areas “impose the least burden on society, and on maintaining flexibility and freedom of choice for the public.” SCB believes that there are no economic data to support the underlying assumptions of this statement, and that a full assessment of the ecosystem services that the forest habitats of the NSO provide would clearly demonstrate the overwhelming benefits that inclusion within the critical habitat would entail over the relatively minimal benefits, if any, of excluding that critical habitat.  Accordingly, SCB recommends that the FWS not exclude any acreage from the final critical habitat designation for the NSO based on its authority under Section 4(b)(2).

SCB’s comment letter on the FWS economic analysis can be found HERE.

The FWS’s proposed revision to the Northern Spotted Owl’s critical habitat is a particularly complex rulemaking. SCB is concurrently filing additional comments regarding other policy concerns relating to the revised critical habitat proposal, including (1) a proposal to utilize “active forestry” techniques to manage spotted owl critical habitat, and (2) a proposal regarding the size and scale of possible forestry activities that will trigger “adverse modification” of spotted owl critical habitat. 

On July 2, the Society for Conservation Biology, on behalf of its Marine Section, submitted formal comments to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) within the Department of Interior regarding its draft programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) regarding possible geological and geophysical seismic activities in support of oil and gas exploration and development in the Atlantic Ocean.  In 2010, Congress ordered BOEM to examine the possible environmental impacts of seismic activities in the Atlantic Ocean, a necessary precursor to further oil exploration and development activities off the Atlantic coast.  SCB is concernd that the draft PEIS underestimates the risks that seismic activities, especially deep penetration seismic air gun surveys, pose for the critically endangered north Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis).  Given the suite of anthropogenic threats that this species already faces from commercial and recreational fisheries, collisions with large vessels, renewable energy development, marine minerals use, LNG import terminals, military training, and dredged material disposal, as well as long-term challenges of climate change, seismic surveys will likely place this species in greater jeopardy of extinction.

High-intensity pulses produced by seismic air gun surveys can cause a range of impacts on marine mammals, fish, and other marine life, including habitat displacement and disruption of vital behaviors essential to foraging and breeding.  In some cases, seismic air gun surveys can result in injuries or mortalities to marine species, including marine mammals.   For these reasons, SCB is supporting Alternative C, the no action alternative, because it represents the most precautionary approach to managing the ongoing development of the Atlantic Ocean’s natural resources, while providing sufficient protection for its critically endangered wildlife.  Under this alternative, BOEM would not permit any seismic activities in the Atlantic ocean with regard to oil and gas exploration.  Adoption of Alternative C would not affect BOEM's ability to move forward with offshore wind or other renewable energy activities.

The SCB comment letter can be found HERE.