National Mitigation & Ecosystem Banking Conference Run-Down

Becca Madsen on June 15, 2009 Comment

"Nobody wakes up in the morning and wants a bowl of wetlands. It's not a consumer product. Ours is an industry created by regulations." -George Howard (Restoration Systems)

If you didn't have the chance to attend the 12th annual National Mitigation & Ecosystem Banking conference last month, here's what industry folks were talking about:

The mitigation banking regulations of 2008
The industry is & will be closely watching how it's implemented. Building on previous efforts to collect info in an anecdotal way, the National Mitigation Banking Association (NMBA) started a formal annual survey in partnership with folks from UNC Chapel Hill. NMBA is interested in fair/consistent application of the new regulations across different Army Corps of Engineers districts. ACOE counters that there *is* flexibility in the interpretation of the federal rule - districts can interpret the same regulation slightly differently across districts.

The NMBA won't be the only ones eyeing mitigation banking. The EPA announced a partnership with Environmental Law Institute to create a national mitigation banking study - they're in the early phases of establishing a scientific advisory panel and a research plan.

There was general sympathy for the underfunded & understaffed nature of ACOE, but... business is business.

Financiers said the new rules provided a backbone of consistency that gives investors incentives to invest in mitigation banks at a greater scale.

Transparency
The ACOE's RIBITS system of tracking mitigation banking is being adopted by more and more districts - ACOE is hoping to have 30 districts loaded onto RIBITS on by spring of 2010.

Conservation banking: holding out for a hero?
The NMBA is hoping conservation banking will spread beyond its CA origins but is there a champion within USFWS to get this going? Florida is a state to watch in terms of increased activity in conservation banking. Example: the Florida Panther has 1 approved bank (~1900 acres), 2 pending (totaling ~4,200 acres), and 9 in review (totaling ~11,400 acres).