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The Cooperative Sagebrush Initiative is still in its formative stages, but the participants have grown rapidly and have maintained a remarkable pace of work. They include representatives of the roughly 65 "local working groups" that were formed in response to the potential listing of the greater sage grouse as an endangered species, the state fish and game agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, coal mining interests, oil and gas interests, grazing interests, and conservation organizations (among them, The Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, and Environmental Defense).
What the participating interests hope to get out of this effort varies. The affected states, which have invested heavily in the preparation of a soon-to-be-released "greater sage grouse conservation strategy," hope the Initiative will provide a mechanism for funding the implementation of that strategy. The energy interests appear to hope that the Initiative will reduce the likelihood that any of the sagebrush associated species will need to be protected under the Endangered Species Act, while simultaneously streamlining and lowering the costs of mitigation for further energy development. Conservation interests hope that the Initiative will result in the effective protection of some of the most important areas within this ecosystem and the better mitigation of impacts to those areas that are being affected by energy and other forms of development. Finally, the federal agencies hope that the Initiative will become a successful and prominent example of the "cooperative conservation" model that the Bush Administration has long touted. The degree of the Administration's interest in the Initiative is underscored by the participation in it of senior representatives of the Administration. One or both of the two general meetings that have been held thus far have been attended by the Deputy Secretary of Interior, the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, the Regional Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a personal representative of Interior Secretary Kempthorne, and a deputy to Assistant Agriculture Secretary Mark Rey.
Two ideas in particular have attracted the interest of many of the Initiative's participants. The first is that those who voluntarily undertake conservation actions should receive some form of assurance that their voluntary efforts will not result in unanticipated restrictions on their land use activities if the species that benefit from their actions are later listed under the Endangered Species Act. The existing mechanism for accomplishing that result, the "Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances," has two characteristics that limit its utility here. Moreover, the assurances it conveys only apply on non-federal land; because much of the sagebrush ecosystem is comprised of checker boarded or mixed federal and non-federal land, the participants in the Initiative - especially the ranching interests - seek some comparable form of assurance with respect to the federal land portions of their operations. Secondarily, Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances are perceived to be too bureaucratically difficult to accomplish. Some equally or more effective assurance mechanism that can be accomplish more quickly and easily is the objective that many participants seek. Because of its past work on Safe Harbor Agreements, Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances, and incentive-based conservation generally, Environmental Defense has been consulted for new ideas on this topic.
The other idea that has gotten a great deal of attention from Initiative participants is that some form of "credit trading" program would incentivize privately initiated conservation efforts and attract investment in conservation efforts from non-traditional sources. Attitudes toward this idea among some Initiative participants tend toward irrational exuberance, while many others have acknowledged that they do not really understand how a credit trading program in the sagebrush ecosystem is supposed to work. Here too, because of Environmental Defense's past work on conservation banking projects, many Initiative participants are looking to it for guidance on credit trading. Michael Bean has agreed to lead a working group that will consider both the assurances and credit trading issues, one of five working groups. Working group leaders, in turn, comprise the "core group" that is tasked with pushing the Initiative beyond conceptualization to implementation. Thus, Environmental Defense has the opportunity to help shape this Initiative over the coming year, and especially to influence the approach it takes to the key issues of landowner assurances and credit trading.
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