Ben Guillon, NEBA’s treasurer and secretary, was hired recently by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agency (WAFWA) to audit their Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) for the lesser prairie chicken (LPC). This innovative CCAA opens an opportunity to develop new markets for NEBA’s members.
Whereas traditional conservation banking may only apply to species that are already listed under the Endangered Species Act, this CCAA allows mitigation for candidate species, species that are being considered by the Fish and Wildlife Service for listing but for which no decision has been made (think greater sage grouse, gopher tortoise or monarch butterfly). Over the past 5 years, this CCAA successfully raised over $65 million, mainly from oil and gas companies, to protect close to 150,000 acres of LPC habitat across five states (Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado).
Although the CCAA has provided conservation for the LPC, it has also some clear limitations and should be restructured to create more transparency and to allow conservation bankers to provide the required conservation and mitigation.
WAFWA’s strategy has been to directly identify, contract for and manage the mitigation for the program. To implement this strategy, it had to build a large staff that resulted in administrative costs that could not be covered by the impactors’ contributions. Instead, WAFWA could have partnered with NEBA’s members (conservation bankers) to acquire private mitigation without the overhead costs. In addition, WAFWA and FWS created a program from scratch when NEBA could have contributed the lessons learned from conservation banking and from the implementation of the 2008 rule. This missed opportunity led to unclear performance standards that now jeopardize one of the most extensive investments in the conservation of a candidate species.
NEBA encourages FWS and WAFWA to continue developing mitigation markets for candidate species. However, we also urge FWS to ensure that future CCAA meet the requirements set for other quality mitigation programs, in particular for mitigation banks. This alignment is critical so that, if a candidate species becomes listed, all mitigation efforts can seamlessly transition to a mitigation framework under the ESA and not be lost. In addition, organizations sponsoring similar CCAA should closely work with NEBA and its members to ensure cost and time effective provision of the required mitigation.