A buffer zone is a neutral zonal area that lies between two or more bodies of land, usually pertaining to countries. Depending on the type of buffer zone, it may serve to separate regions or conjoin them. Common types of buffer zones are demilitarized zones, border zones and certain restrictive easement zones and green belts. Such zones may be comprised by a sovereign state, forming a buffer state.
Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), formerly known as the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that provides technical assistance to farmers and other private landowners and managers.
Land development is altering the landscape in any number of ways such as:
Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits to humans provided by the natural environment and from healthy ecosystems. Such ecosystems include, for example, agroecosystems, forest ecosystems, grassland ecosystems and aquatic ecosystems. These ecosystems, functioning in healthy relationship, offer such things like natural pollination of crops, clean air, extreme weather mitigation, and human mental and physical well-being. Collectively, these benefits are becoming known as 'ecosystem services', and are often integral to the provisioning of clean drinking water, the decomposition of wastes, and resilience and productivity of food ecosystems.
Environmental mitigation, compensatory mitigation, or mitigation banking, are terms used primarily by the United States government and the related environmental industry to describe projects or programs intended to offset known impacts to an existing historic or natural resource such as a stream, wetland, endangered species, archeological site, paleontological site or historic structure. To "mitigate" means to make less harsh or hostile. Environmental mitigation is typically a part of an environmental crediting system established by governing bodies which involves allocating debits and credits. Debits occur in situations where a natural resource has been destroyed or severely impaired and credits are given in situations where a natural resource has been deemed to be improved or preserved. Therefore, when an entity such as a business or individual has a "debit" they are required to purchase a "credit". In some cases credits are bought from "mitigation banks" which are large mitigation projects established to provide credit to multiple parties in advance of development when such compensation cannot be achieved at the development site or is not seen as beneficial to the environment. Crediting systems can allow credit to be generated in different ways. For example, in the United States, projects are valued based on what the intentions of the project are which may be to preserve, enhance, restore or create (PERC) a natural resource.
A biodiversity action plan (BAP) is an internationally recognized program addressing threatened species and habitats and is designed to protect and restore biological systems. The original impetus for these plans derives from the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). As of 2009, 191 countries have ratified the CBD, but only a fraction of these have developed substantive BAP documents.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) is the Florida government agency charged with environmental protection.
Conservation finance is the practice of raising and managing capital to support land, water, and resource conservation. Conservation financing options vary by source from public, private, and nonprofit funders; by type from loans, to grants, to tax incentives, to market mechanisms; and by scale ranging from federal to state, national to local.
The Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) was passed by Congress in 1990 to fund wetland enhancement. In cooperation with multiple government agencies, CWPPRA is moving forward to restore the lost wetlands of the Gulf Coast as well as protecting the wetlands from future deterioration. The scope of the mission is not simply for the restoration of Louisiana's Wetlands, but also the research and implementation of preventative measures for wetlands preservation.
Biodiversity banking, also known as biodiversity trading or conservation banking, biodiversity mitigation banks, compensatory habitat, set-asides, biodiversity offsets, are conservation activities that compensate for the loss of biodiversity with the goal of biodiversity maintenance through a framework which allows biodiversity to be reliably measured, and market based solutions applied to improving biodiversity. Biodiversity banking provides a means to place a monetary value on ecosystem services. Typically this involves land protection, restoration, an/or enhancement. Biodiversity banking is often applied so that there is no "net loss of a particular biodiversity feature." According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, by 2004, interest in voluntary biodiversity offsets was growing in the United States, Brazil, Australia, Canada and the EU. Experience suggested that industry, governments, local communities and conservation groups all benefit from biodiversity offsets or biodiversity banking.
Saline Wetlands Conservation Partnership (SWCP) is a conservation program devoted to the protection and preservation of Nebraska’s Eastern Saline Wetlands. The Eastern Saline Wetlands of Lancaster and Saunders counties Nebraska are among the most unusual and threatened wetland communities in the state. Limited to the floodplain swales and depressions within the Salt Creek, Little Salt Creek, and Rock Creek drainages, it’s estimated that the Eastern Saline Wetlands once covered an area in excess of 200,000 acres (810 km2). Today, due to extensive degradation, draining and filling through commercial, residential, and agricultural development, less than 4,000 acres (16 km2) remain, and many of these remnants are highly degraded. Now more than ever it’s become increasingly important to preserve what remains of this unique wetland resource. Although several existing programs have been recognized to address saline wetland conservation needs, they alone have not been enough to ensure the long term protection of this endangered resource. Thus, the Saline Wetland Conservation Partnership (SWCP) was created to offer additional protection and management of the state’s diminishing saline wetlands.
Ecosystem management is an approach to natural resource management that aims to ensure the long-term sustainability and persistence of an ecosystems function and services while meeting socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs. Although indigenous communities have employed sustainable ecosystem management approaches for millennia, ecosystem management emerged formally as a concept in the 1990s from a growing appreciation of the complexity of ecosystems, as well as humans' reliance and influence on natural systems.
Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 531 U.S. 159 (2001), was a decision by the US Supreme Court that interpreted a provision of the Clean Water Act. Section 404 of the Act requires permits for the discharge of dredged or fill materials into "navigable waters," which is defined by the Act as "waters of the United States." That provision was the basis for the federal wetlands-permitting program.
The Paroo-Darling National Park is a protected national park that is located in the Far West region of New South Wales, in eastern Australia. The 178,053-hectare (439,980-acre) national park spans two distinct regions in the outback area. This region covers the arid catchments of the Paroo River and the Paroo-Darling confluence to the south.
"No net loss" is the United States government's overall policy goal regarding wetlands preservation. The goal of the policy is to balance wetland loss due to economic development with wetlands reclamation, mitigation, and restorations efforts, so that the total acreage of wetlands in the country does not decrease, but remains constant or increases. To achieve the objective of no net loss, the federal government utilizes several different environmental policy tools which legally protect wetlands, provide rules and regulations for citizens and corporations interacting with wetlands, and incentives for the preservation and conservation of wetlands. Given the public benefits provided by wetland ecosystem services, such as flood control, nutrient farming, habitat, water filtration, and recreational area, the estimations that over half the acreage of wetlands in the United States has been lost within the last three centuries is of great concern to local, state, and federal agencies as well as the public interest they serve.
A Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) is a required part of an application for an Incidental Take Permit, a permit issued under the United States Endangered Species Act (ESA) to private entities undertaking projects that might result in the destruction of an endangered or threatened species. It is a planning document that ensures that the anticipated take of a listed species will be minimized or mitigated by conserving the habitat upon which the species depend, thereby contributing to the recovery of the species as a whole.
Biodiversity offsetting is a system used predominantly by planning authorities and developers to fully compensate for biodiversity impacts associated with economic development, through the planning process. In some circumstances, biodiversity offsets are designed to result in an overall biodiversity gain. Offsetting is generally considered the final stage in a mitigation hierarchy, whereby predicted biodiversity impacts must first be avoided, minimised and reversed by developers, before any remaining impacts are offset. The mitigation hierarchy serves to meet the environmental policy principle of "No Net Loss" of biodiversity alongside development.
The Lacassane Company is a land management company, with a goal of sustainable land management using an environmental management scheme that involves a host of tools including holistic management. Located primarily in Jefferson Davis and Cameron parish, with property in Ragley, Louisiana, the company headquarters is in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
The UW Bothell/Cascadia College Wetland Restoration Project is a 58-acre forested floodplain restoration site at the delta of North Creek in King County, Washington, USA. The State of Washington bought the site in 1994 from the Truly family, and dedicated the land to the construction of the Bothell regional campus of the University of Washington and Cascadia College. Construction began in 1998, as did the stream and floodplain restoration. Two years later, in 2000, classes opened for students, and in 2001 the main phase of the restoration was completed. Today the site is an ongoing area of restoration education.
Conservation banking is an environmental market-based method designed to offset adverse effects, generally, to species of concern, are threatened, or endangered and protected under the United States Endangered Species Act (ESA) through the creation of conservation banks. Conservation banking can be viewed as a method of mitigation that allows permitting agencies to target various natural resources typically of value or concern, and it is generally contemplated as a protection technique to be implemented before the valued resource or species will need to be mitigated. The ESA prohibits the "taking" of fish and wildlife species which are officially listed as endangered or threatened in their populations. However, under section 7(a)(2) for Federal Agencies, and under section 10(a) for private parties, a take may be permissible for unavoidable impacts if there are conservation mitigation measures for the affected species or habitat. Purchasing “credits” through a conservation bank is one such mitigation measure to remedy the loss.
