How the U.S. Department of Interior Angered Western Governors (and Many Others)

Former U.S. Department of Interior senior policy analyst, Joel Clement writing in the Denver Post, provides a succinct, informed introduction to compensatory mitigation and explains its importance in offsetting unavoidable impacts from industry on our Nation’s public lands.  His commentary explores both the values and the necessity for mitigation banking.

Writing in the Post, Clement says: “This compensatory mitigation approach led to a thriving economic sector comprised of mitigation banks and land trusts — entities busy protecting lands or enhancing wetlands so they can sell credits to the companies who are responsible for paying up to compensate for their impacts. This sector has the potential to generate its own multi-billion dollar economy, and, along with the recreation economy, was one of the few hopeful economic signals coming from America’s rural west. Until Zinke torpedoed the practice in July, that is.”

Recent Department rollbacks have called to question the new Administration’s understanding for the concepts or the businesses behind mitigation banking, and Clement’s article is a well-timed reminder of why private investment is needed as a working partner in order to solve our nation’s most challenging environmental issues.  Read: How the Interior Department ticked off Western governors