Banking on the Environment 

Colorado Advances Cash for Conservation

Friends, 

 

Last March, I applauded the Colorado State Land Board's (SLB) visionary approach to managing its state trust lands and the way it considers conservation of its assets as a means to benefit trust beneficiaries today and for generations to come. The SLB believes that the state trust lands' ecosystem values - its streams, wetlands, and wildlife habitat-are not only worth preserving, but can actually generate millions because they are preserved.

 

With this in mind, the SLB asked the Sonoran Institute, along with Solano Partners and Parametrix, to explore the potential for entering the ecosystem services marketplace. Created initially through the federal Clean Water Act, this marketplace puts a monetary value on environmental benefits and allows entities like the SLB to generate credits by restoring function to impaired ecosystems on its properties. These credits can then be sold to entities that are required to provide compensatory mitigation for harm they cause to other ecosystems through activities such as the energy development or transportation projects. Our research found ample demand for ecosystem services in Colorado and an equally abundant supply of ecosystem values on SLB trust lands.  

 

I am delighted to report that the SLB is taking our findings all the way to the bank - the mitigation bank. The board is moving forward on a number of tangible projects that promise to help it achieve its goal of producing $10 million in conservation revenue by 2016.

 

Restoring Rare Wetlands

The largest of SLB's new initiatives is a project to create a wetland mitigation bank in the South Park area of Colorado. The SLB has contracted with Johnson Environmental and Ecometrics, Inc. on a two-year project that will identify properties that are the best candidates for restoration and then outline a plan for the SLB to create salable wetland mitigation credits.

"The South Park region is home to a number of rare fen wetlands," notes Mindy Gottsenger, Stewardship Trust/Conservation Services Manager with the SLB.  "These mountain fens are a special kind of wetland that is fed by underground springs. Over the last century, they have been drained and degraded through over-grazing, and we are interested in restoring them."  

Beyond laying the groundwork to create revenue through this wetland restoration, the project will also develop a model that the SLB can apply to a variety of other ecosystem services in order to take advantage of the full range of mitigation opportunities available on its trust lands.

Paving the Way for New Markets

While the rules and market for wetland mitigation are fairly well established, protocols for other types of ecosystem services markets are more obscure. The SLB is involved in two projects to help advance the emerging markets of stream and wildlife mitigation banking.

Today, each Environmental Protection Agency region has its own protocol and assessment system for stream mitigation.  The SLB is helping fund a multi-agency project led by the Colorado State University and the Colorado Natural Heritage Program to develop a model to standardize stream mitigation rules and metrics, not just in Colorado but throughout the country.

A wildlife habitat exchange operates in much the same way as a wetland or stream mitigation bank. The SLB is supporting a project led by the Environmental Defense Fund to create a wildlife habitat exchange that is initially focused on greater sage grouse but will ultimately serve as a model for conserving a wide variety of species, both listed and unlisted.

Cash for Prairie Dogs

The SLB's first ecosystem services dollars are coming from an unlikely source: prairie dogs. Although it had never accepted importation of prairie dogs to its properties in the past, the SLB found a way to help when the Regional Transportation District FasTracks's light rail expansion project threatened an existing prairie dog town. In addition to meshing with the SLB's grassland restoration goals for the area, adding the prairie dogs to an existing population on the Lowry Range southeast of Metro Denver is bringing in more than $3,000 a year for trust land beneficiaries.

"We don't think mitigation banking will ever bring in the amount of money to replace oil and gas development," says Mindy, "but it does make a good argument for looking at the contributions that the environment makes to society and to put a dollar value on it."

I couldn't agree more.  Through its proactive efforts to build mitigation markets, the SLB is driving the advancement of conservation mechanisms that will not only benefit the public school children of Colorado but should inspire land managers throughout the West.

 

 

Sincerely,    

 

Luther Propst

Executive Director