[...]... cooperation of private landowners still remains vital to the preservation of endangered species One can attempt to compel their cooperation through command and control mandates, or one can attempt to induce cooperation through flexible incentives that reward landowners for their good stewardship of habitat and species A variety of such flexible compensation schemes are possible: direct compensation from... draft a public -to- public conservation agreement Species protection on private lands, however, is a different story Now we are talking about creating new private -to- public agreements The ESA prohibits private citizens from taking any threatened or endangered species on their private property, and the USFWS has interpreted “taking” to mean any action that injures or kills an endangered species or degrades... Shogren anisms to elicit the cooperation of private landowners Mechanisms include conservation easements, leases, habitat banking, habitat conservation planning, safe harbors, candidate conservation agreements, and the no-surprises policy (see Bean 1999) The Defenders of Wildlife (2002) recently reviewed incentive-based approaches currently being used to encourage habitat conservation on private land across... single large habitat usually desired for effective conservation A government agency’s role is to target the critical habitat, to integrate the agglomeration bonus into the compensation package, and to provide landowners the unconditional freedom to choose which acres to retire Oregon’s Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) illustrates the idea of an allied land retirement bonus scheme The CREP... conservation value of private lands in Chapter 6 They develop a bioappraisal process that assesses the conservation value of land by describing and documenting land characteristics and attributes that affect the conservation value of the land The relevant land characteristics and attributes (and hence the land parcel’s conservation value) are dependent on the objectives of the regulator or conservator... of the ESA on private lands is an inefficient approach to species conservation Efficiency, or achieving habitat conservation at lower costs, can be enhanced with the use of markets to transfer the responsibility of conservation to those who can 18 Jason F Shogren afford it best because of lower opportunity costs or higher values for conservation or both A standard approach of tradable habitat credits... 1995 Conserving biodiversity on private land: Incentives for management or compensation for lost expectations? Harvard Environmental Law Review 19:303 – 408 General Accounting Office (GAO) 1995 Endangered Species Act: Information on species protection on nonfederal lands Washington, D.C GAO/RCED95-16 (Dec 1994) Innes, Robert, Stephan Polasky, and John Tschirhart 1998 Takings, compensation, and endangered. .. compensation question in part by offering up voluntary incentive programs to landowners to increase their incentives for private species protection and biodiversity conservation The idea is to transform an environmental liability into a marketable asset (Bayon 2002) The USFWS and more than a thousand nonprofit land trusts promote habitat conservation by using voluntary incentive mech- 10 Jason F Shogren... successful ESA implementation (Bean and Wilcove 1997) Attempts to reauthorize the act have focused on altering the incentives to private landowners by creating financial incentives that shift the burden of conserving habitat from the landowner to a government agency or a private organization Financial incentives for landowners have proponents and opponents on both sides of the debate Some landowners and... newly created Conservation Security Program The CSP pays producers who adopt and maintain conservation practices on private lands Contracts run five to ten years, and annual payments range from $20,000 to $45,000 The CSP uses an initial Secretary’s bonus to encourage people to sign up 14 Jason F Shogren Another imaginative bonus scheme that could be incorporated into these existing incentive options is . of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Species at risk : using economic incentives to shelter endangered species on private lands / edited by Jason F. Shogren — 1st ed. p Species at Risk 00-T3053-FM 11/5/04 3:06 PM Page i THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Species at Risk Using Economic Incentives to Shelter Endangered Species on Private Lands edited by jason. alk. paper) 1. Nature conservation Economic aspects—United States. 2. Nature conservation—United States—Citizen participation. 3. Endangered species United States. I. Shogren, Jason F. QH76.S639