Background

• As trustee for living marine resources and their habitats, NOAA represents the social interest in habitat resources important to the nation’s marine fisheries. This project is looking at the way this interest is represented in reviewing development that impacts fish habitat. Dr. Dennis King and his associate Elizabeth Price have developed a tool for NOAA that integrates economic and ecological concepts to determine appropriate wetlands mitigation. The Mitigation Calculator, as the tool is called, can help prevent mitigation that results in losses of wetland values and imposes risks on the general public, consistent with the President's "no net loss" policy. Benefits include making mitigation and permit reviews more predictable and streamlined, giving mitigation providers a choice between investing in better quality mitigation (more $ per acre) or greater quantity (more acres), and providing a consistent methodology for mitigation recommendations. Next steps are to conduct pilot demonstrations in some of the NOAA Fisheries regions and field offices in 2006.

Documents

• Developing Defensible Wetland Mitigation Ratios: A Companion to the "Five-Step Wetland Mitigation Ratio Calculator" by Dennis King, Ph.D, and Elizabeth Price, M.S.
• Mitigation Calculator Spreadsheet
  

Links

• (Comming Soon)