On Tuesday, April 11, NEBA Board Member Michael Sprague led a meeting with high-ranking officials from the office of Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in Washington, D.C. The 45-minute meeting was extremely productive and included discussions of the importance of high mitigation standards and the need for a level playing field for species bankers and others committing private investment for conservation.
Sprague shared the latest NEBA whitepaper
with the DOI officials, discussing specific challenges for bankers with programs that may not offer real durability or equivalency in their mitigation efforts.
The NEBA Board of Directors has begun work on a new whitepaper in response to suggestions from Interior and intends to hold follow-up meetings with the Department over the next several months.
A newly released Government Accountability Office (GAO) report is shining a spotlight on a concern many in the mitigation banking industry have raised for years: inconsistent implementation of the federal compensatory mitigation program across U.S. Army Corps of Engineers districts. Under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, the Corps requires compensatory mitigation when permitted
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For too long, environmental policy debates have been framed around a false and unproductive premise: that economic growth and environmental protection are inherently at odds. This mindset is not only outdated—it is actively harmful to both outcomes. Mitigation banking offers a clear path forward. By design, it aligns economic incentives with ecological restoration, proving that well-functioning
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