Author: Robert Bonnie

As the needs of developers and landowners come into conflict with the needs of endangered species, the US has begun experimenting with a process known as conservation banking. In a guest feature, The Ecosystem Marketplace asked Robert Bonnie, of the Environmental Defense Center for Conservation Incentives, to look at the process and describe one case study involving gopher tortoises in Alabama.

November 16, 2004

During the late 1980s and 1990s, stories pitting endangered species -- spotted owls, wolves, and the like -- against landowners abounded. So it surprised no one in Mobile, Alabama, when another endangered species "train wreck" appeared imminent. It was the year 2000 and local landowners were on a collision course with wildlife. In this case, the species in question was the federally threatened gopher tortoise and the conflict arose when the Mobile County health department began denying landowners permits to install septic systems on lots containing these tortoises since doing so would run afoul of the Endangered Species Act.

While landowners were unable to build homes, gopher tortoises were losing theirs. Once a common resident of longleaf pine forests along the southeastern Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains, the loss of the tortoise's native ecosystem to agricultural conversion, urbanization, fire suppression, invasive species, and intensive forestry resulted in the tortoise being added in 1987 to the threatened species list within the western portion of the animal's range, including Mobile. The loss of the tortoise throughout its range could have a cascading effect on wildlife populations as ecologists have found over 360 species making some use or relying on the burrows created by gopher tortoises.

In Mobile, surveys during the 1990s showed that, despite the tortoise's protection under the Endangered Species Act, populations were dropping precipitously. As with most endangered species, prohibition against habitat destruction, while important, is insufficient in and of itself to save the gopher tortoise. In many cases -including that of the gopher tortoise- maintaining suitable habitat for wildlife typically requires landowners to proactively do something - that is, to invest in manipulating or enhancing the habitat. Moreover, there are is little federally-owned land in Mobile with suitable tortoise habitat. The future of the gopher tortoise, then, depends in large degree on non-federal landowners' willingness to plant longleaf pine, re-introduce periodic fires into pine forests, control hardwoods and invasive plants, and thin dense forests -- all of which are necessary to re-create the park-like longleaf forests that tortoises rely on.

None of those things were happening in Mobile and so while landowners were angry at being told they couldn't build, tortoises grew rarer by the day. In other words, tortoises were losing a veritable war of attrition. Luckily, just as things began to look desperate, Art Dyas had an idea.

Dyas is the forester for the Mobile Area Water and Sewer System (MAWSS), which owns several thousand acres adjacent to Converse Lake, source of drinking water for the City of Mobile. Those lands are managed to protect the water quality in the lake, while also providing timber revenue for MAWSS, which uses the money to underwrite acquisition of additional lands. Dyas knew that some of the lands in MAWSS's ownership contained longleaf pine that, once restored and managed, would provide both suitable tortoise habitat and a sustainable source of timber revenue for the agency. So Dyas suggested that MAWSS should begin restoring degraded longleaf pine and then use that land to sell gopher tortoise conservation credits to landowners and developers whose plans to build were being thwarted.

Based on this brainstorm, it wasn't long before MAWSS, Dyas, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Environmental Defense, and gopher tortoise experts had developed a conservation plan for the tortoise and, in 2001, the Mobile gopher tortoise conservation bank opened for business. Under the plan, landowners with tortoises on small parcels of habitat can now purchase a credit for $3,500 for each gopher tortoise to be taken, allowing them to proceed with development. Tortoises on the property where development is to occur are tested for disease and, if disease free (as all have been to date), are then transferred to the conservation bank. For every credit sold, MAWSS permanently protects and manages enough habitat for each tortoise.

Landowners like the concept and the tortoises, too, appear to be doing well. When the bank opened, the 220-acre site was home to 12 tortoises. Today there are nearly 60. As part of the conservation plan, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is overseeing an intensive monitoring program that includes radio tracking of tortoises and annual surveys to ascertain whether the tortoises are successfully breeding - a sure sign that the tortoises are thriving. Indeed, the monitoring program has already documented that the translocated tortoises are in fact staying at the bank and that, for the first time in years, they are reproducing.

Beyond helping the tortoises, conservation banking has changed the way one landowner, MAWSS, views these endangered animals: Whereas tortoises were once something of a nuisance, today their welfare and the protection of the longleaf pine ecosystem on which they depend is a source of revenue and, perhaps just as importantly, a source of pride. And, as if that weren't enough, the whole process has enhanced the water agency's reputation: MAWSS is now viewed by the wider community as having helped to solve what at one time appeared to be vexing and intractable problem. So successful has the gopher tortoise experience been, that MAWSS is now considering enlarging the bank.

The experience with gopher tortoises in Alabama simply serves to highlight how, although the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) has undoubtedly been an enormous boon to rare species conservation, its impact has fallen short on the private and non-federal lands where many - if not most- endangered species are found. In large measure this has resulted from the fact that landowners all too often equate endangered species with regulations and financial loss. Furthermore, for many ecosystems, restoring habitat for rare species costs money. Conservation banking and other incentive-based approaches work because landowners, many of whom would like nothing more than to participate in recovery efforts, are given the opportunity and the financial and other resources needed to underwrite the costs of stewardship. In other words, the power of private conservation is unleashed.

In addition to aligning landowner interests with the public interest in wildlife protection, conservation banking holds significant promise for endangered species because it addresses one of the most serious threats to many species: habitat fragmentation. In Mobile, tortoise populations are fragmented by unsuitable habitat, roads, houses, and commercial areas. Even in the absence of increased habitat loss, tortoises in these areas are unlikely to find mates and even when they do, baby tortoises often succumb to dogs, cats, cars and other threats. Rather than contributing to a larger population, isolated tortoises are often simply biding their time until they die of old age. By allowing habitat to be reconfigured into larger, un-fragmented parcels, conservation banking helps endangered species populations stand a better chance of surviving and reproducing.

This is perhaps best illustrated by another private conservation bank, this one on International Paper's Southlands Forest in Bainbridge, Georgia. This bank was established for the benefit of the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, which, like the gopher tortoise, is a resident of the longleaf pine ecosystem. When International Paper first got involved in this process, in 1999, the company's lands throughout the South contained 18 breeding pairs of woodpeckers in five different states. Many of those birds were isolated from larger populations, making their long-term viability less than secure. For example, International Paper owned the last two breeding pairs in one Alabama County while the 16,000-acre Southlands Forest contained only 3 woodpeckers - all of them male.

International Paper's bank allows the company to remove woodpeckers from their other land holdings and slowly consolidate their total, overall population onto Southlands, but only after new birds have successfully been established at Southlands. Today, Southlands has nearly 50 birds, comprising 12 breeding groups (red cockaded woodpeckers are cooperative breeders with juvenile birds assisting the parents in raising young). As with the tortoise, the conservation plan establishing the bank requires long-term management to maintain suitable longleaf pine habitat at Southlands. International Paper's goal for the site is 25-30 breeding pairs. Once Southlands has more than 18 breeding groups (its original baseline number), it will also be able to sell woodpecker credits to developers whose work might impact woodpeckers elsewhere. And woodpecker credits have been estimated to be worth as much as US$250,000 per credit. In other words, the woodpecker bank could become an interesting source of revenue for IP's operations in Georgia.

While the Mobile and Southlands banks have been successful to date, conservation banking does involve trade-offs. Anytime endangered species are relocated or habitat is taken, there are risks that species recovery efforts will be negatively affected. But, the question for conservationists is whether the risks of doing nothing outweigh the risks of banking. In Mobile, for example, banking has secured one permanently protected gopher tortoise population in a county where the long-term viability of tortoises was in serious question. Despite considerable effort, woodpeckers on International Paper's lands have also continued to decline with the notable exception of Southlands - where the woodpecker has dramatically increased and its future appears secure.

Clearly conservation banking alone will not solve the many conflicts that exist between endangered species and landowners on private and other non-federal lands. Indeed, restoring and protecting habitat for endangered species on private lands will require substantially increased resources for financial incentives, and streamlined programs that provide landowners with assurances that managing lands for endangered species won't saddle them with excessive regulation. Beyond that, protecting endangered species -given the fact that their circumstances vary so widely across different political, geographic, and biological contexts- will undoubtedly require a well-stocked conservation toolbox and, experience in the US, indicates that conservation banking can and should be an important part of that toolbox.

Indeed, conservation banking could become an especially important tool in those areas that are most in need of help: in regions where habitat is under considerable pressure and, thus, a potentially lucrative market exists for conservation credits. In these circumstances, banking can reward landowners who protect the public good while heading off endangered species train-wrecks. Most importantly, banking makes it possible to fund the protection of healthy wildlife populations for years to come; to turn conventional wisdom on its head and use the laws of supply and demand in the service of conservation.

Robert Bonnie is Managing Director of the Environmental Defense Center for Conservation Incentives. He can be reached at bonnie@environmentaldefense.org