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No Rave Reviews for Wetlands Mitigation
Making the Army Corps as mean as the IRS may be the only way to yank the practice and science of wetlands mitigation out of a bureaucratic quagmire, states a new U.C. Berkeley review study.
The review, which analyzed all published findings on wetlands mitigation over the past decade, notes that powerful new partnerships have pushed wetlands mitigation into the public eye, that wildlife managers have increased their use of mitigation as a management tool and that the general population has even begun to understand the concept. But it also finds that the practice of compensatory restoration has broken free from its scientific anchor. "Despite evolving sophistication by the research and management community, the results are not encouraging, and the success of mitigation remains in serious doubt," it says.
The review study, authored by U.C. Berkeley's Margaret Race and National Marine Fisheries' Mark Fonseca, also found consistent evidence that wetlands regulatory bureaucracies still can't work together. It also claims that nobody follows up on mitigation projects once they're approved.
"Unless we change the status quo of compensatory mitigation, we fear that the baseline of wetland acreage will continue to erode in the face of faulty policies and poor implementation," it says.
The review recommends that wetlands regulatory agencies use an IRS approach with random audits, fines and civil penalties to bring the system into line. It also recommends that research and inventory tasks be de-emphasized in favor of enforcement. "Once acreage is assured, only then does it make sense to emphasize the debate over how to measure wetland quality, function, natural equivalency or persistence, " says the review. Those interested in seeing the review in full may have to wait for its publication in the journal Ecological Applications next February.
Contact: Margaret Race (510)642-7171
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