Efficacy of biocontrol against Chrysomelid pests in lab vs field studies: Potential biases of setting and phylogenetic subgroups

The beetle family Chrysomelidae is a speciose group of voracious herbivores with a wide number of ecological implications. While some Chrysomelid species have been introduced or augmented as biological control agents of invasive plants, many other species have found success as economically important pests of field crops and stored grains, leading to severe yield losses in cucurbits, legumes, and other systems. Controlling such pests, especially in the field, is particularly difficult due to the timing of their complex life cycles, the fossorial nature of many species’ larvae, and ability to produce multiple generations in a single growing season. This study aimed to assess patterns of efficacy in biocontrol against various Chrysomelid pests by means of meta-analysis, with the principal goal of comparing differences in effect size between lab and field studies to identify any biases when translating said studies to applications. Across 89 biocontrol assessments gathered from 20 studies, there was no significant difference in effect size between lab (n=43) and field studies (n=46). However, there was a significant gap in lab versus field studies and the different clades within Chrysomelidae represented, suggesting data for lower taxonomic groups may be incomplete and thus difficult to elucidate

Dynamic Forest Federalism

State and local governments have long maintained regulatory authority to manage natural resources, and most subnational governments have politically exercised that authority to some degree. Policy makers, however, have increasingly recognized that the dynamic attributes of natural resources make them difficult to manage on any one scale of government. As a result, the nation has shifted toward multilevel governance known as “dynamic federalism” for many if not most regulatory subject areas, especially in the context of the natural environment. The nation has done so both legally and politically—the constitutional validity of expanded federal regulatory authority over resources has consistently been upheld by courts in recent decades, and federal, state, and local governments have been increasingly politically engaged in addressing environmental harms. Yet, remnants of “dual federalism”—which conceives of constitutionally protected, separate spheres of governance as between the federal and state governments—impact the governance of certain resources, like subnational forests. The preservation of the nation’s forests, in turn, is critical to environmental well-being in the coming decades, especially when considering the crucial role of forests in combating climate change. The entrenchment of legal and political dualism in the forest context stymies federal in puts into subnational forest management at a time when state and local governments are unlikely, given current trends, to curb the destruction of a significant acreage of the nation’s forests over the next fifty years. This Article, first, uses forest resources as a case study to shed light on the broader constitutional debate regarding dual versus dynamic regulatory approaches in the United States. Second, the Article is the first to thoroughly detail the under-analyzed status of subnational forest management regulation on the dual-dynamic federalism spectrum and the first to make a normative argument that U.S. forest policy should become more dynamic to avoid the unmitigated destruction of resources of increasing value to the nation, and indeed the globe, in a time of climate change

Climate Change, Forests and Federalism: Seeing the Treaty for the Trees

Despite numerous attempts over the past two decades—including, most recently, the Copenhagen climate discussions in late 2009—international forest and climate negotiations have failed to produce a legally binding treaty addressing global forest management activities. This failure is due in large part to a lack of U.S. leadership. Though U.S. participation in ongoing forest and climate negotiations is essential, scholars have not fully explored the potential limiting effects of federalism on the United States’ treaty power in the area of forest management. Such an exploration is necessary given the debate among constitutional law scholars regarding the scope of the treaty power, the United States’ history of invoking federalism to inhibit treaty formation and participation, and the constitutional reservation of primary land use regulatory authority for state and local governments. This Article argues that due to great uncertainty surrounding the question of whether federalism limits the federal government’s ability to enter into and implement a legally binding treaty directly regulating forest management activities via prescriptive mechanisms, any binding treaty aimed at forests should include voluntary, market-based mechanisms—like REDD, forest certification, and ecosystem service transaction programs—to facilitate U.S. participation and avoid challenges to treaty implementation in the United States

Climate Change, Forests, and Federalism: Seeing the Treaty for the Trees

Despite numerous attempts over the past two decadesincluding, most recently, the Copenhagen climate discussions in late 2009-international forest and climate negotiations have failed to produce a legally binding treaty addressing global forest management activities. This failure is due in large part to a lack of U.S. leadership. Though U.S. participation in ongoing forest and climate negotiations is essential, scholars have not fully explored the potential limiting effects of federalism on the United States\u27 treaty power in the area of forest management. Such an exploration is necessary given the debate among constitutional law scholars regarding the scope of the treaty power, the United States\u27 history of invoking federalism to inhibit treaty formation and participation, and the constitutional reservation of primary land use regulatory authority for state and local governments. This Article argues that due to great uncertainty surrounding the question of whether federalism limits the federal government\u27s ability to enter into and implement a legally binding treaty directly regulating forest management activities via prescriptive mechanisms, any binding treaty aimed at forests should include voluntary, market-based mechanisms like REDD, forest certification, and ecosystem service transaction programs-to facilitate U.S. participation and avoid challenges to treaty implementation in the United States

The Public and Wildlife Trust Doctrines and the Untold Story of the Lucas Remand

Government attempts to protect ecosystems on private lands are often thwarted by Fifth Amendment takings claims demanding that “just compensation” be paid to the property owner. In the case of Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a state statute could survive a takings claim if the state could prove on remand that “background principles of property law” applied to the subject property. Scholarly works since Lucas have argued that “background principles” includes the public and wildlife trust doctrines. However, on remand, the state failed to assert either doctrine in defense of the statute. Though authors have focused on this aspect of the case, no author has before, to my knowledge, discussed the oral arguments presented on remand to the South Carolina Supreme Court. These arguments were neither transcribed in court documents, nor detailed in the final court order. Strikingly, during the oral argument the court actually invited the state to assert the public trust doctrine, but the state was unprepared. This invitation by the court lends important support to the argument that the doctrines may be asserted to protect environmental regulations from takings claims under the circumstances presented in Lucas. This article details the history of the two doctrines, discussing the similarities between them and demonstrating their broad application to a greater number of resources than those protected in the seminal cases. The article next analyzes the Lucas remand, focusing on the court’s invitation to the state to assert the public trust doctrine. Finally, the article discusses how the U.S. Supreme Court could have decided the case without remand, by applying the doctrines directly – the nature of the doctrines would have allowed the Court to uphold the state law without violating the Constitution

Institutional Preconditions for Policy Success

Policy failures receive much attention from the public and from policy makers adjusting policy in response to failure. Yet, lessons learned from policy failures are necessarily ex post observations. Not only has the policy failed to achieve its purposes, but a great deal of political, institutional, temporal, and economic capital has been wasted. A new body of literature on policy success undertakes ex ante analysis of successful policy designs, instrument choices, and other policy-making variables to establish a framework for more effective policy making. Though policy success may be inhibited by a variety of procedural, programmatic, or political factors, institutional analysis—and specifically constitutional constraints on a government’s ability to craft certain policy instruments—has not yet been incorporated into the policy success and various other policy studies literatures. This Article is the first to undertake that integration and demonstrates how institutional analysis in earlier stages of the policy cycle can help society avoid constitutionally driven policy failures and move toward institutional policy successes. Only when this institutional precondition is achieved will the procedural, programmatic, and political components of a policy have an opportunity to succeed

Promoting and Establishing the Recovery of Endangered Species on Private Lands: A Case Study of the Gopher Tortoise (Duke Law, Student Paper Series)

Important species are increasingly becoming endangered on private lands largely left unregulated by federal and state laws. The gopher tortoise is one such species. The tortoise is a keystone species, meaning that upon its existence numerous other species exist. Despite its importance, tortoise populations have declined by 80% - partly due to development pressures, but primarily due to forest management practices which have reduced the longleaf pine ecosystem upon which it depends. This article focus on legal and policy issues associated with both development and forest management. Because private forest management practices are the primary cause of tortoise decline, the article concludes by suggesting management practices which can benefit both private landowners and the tortoise. Blake Hudson, J.D. candidate, Duke Law \u2707

Reconstituting Land-Use Federalism to Address Transitory and Perpetual Disasters: The Bimodal Federalism Framework

Scholars analyzing the intersection of federalism and disaster law and policy have primarily focused on the difficulties federalism poses for interjurisdictional coordination of disaster response. Though scholars have highlighted that rising disaster risks and costs are associated with “land-use planning that exacerbates, rather than mitigates, disaster risk,” a more holistic analysis of land-use-related disaster law and policy is needed. This Article provides a more comprehensive framework within which to analyze prospective mitigation or prevention of disaster risk and costs through a rebalancing—or reconstituting—of the respective roles of the federal and state governments in land-use planning. The federal government does not currently maintain direct regulatory inputs into a variety of land-use planning policies that exacerbate disaster risks and costs—a situation that likely results from the history of jurisprudence declaring that land-use regulation is the “quintessential state and local government” power under the Constitution. Even so, because of the national interests at stake and the greater capacity of the federal government to coordinate standards for disasters with very large interjurisdictional impacts, greater federal regulatory inputs for certain disasters are needed where state and local governments have failed to formulate standards. For other land-use-related disasters, federal inputs may be less necessary, though overlapping federal, state, and local government regulations can yield even more robust disaster mitigation and prevention policies. This Article first categorizes the various disasters that implicate state and local government land-use planning along a “transitoryperpetual” spectrum. This spectrum provides a frame of reference for assessing which land-use-related disasters are more localized with shorter temporal effects, and which therefore may require fewer federal inputs, and those that have far longer temporal effects and larger interjurisdictional impacts of nationwide import, therefore requiring greater federal input. The spectrum further provides a framework for determining the viability, from a constitutional perspective, of federal regulatory inputs into land-use planning for which more federal inputs may be needed. This constitutional analysis is undertaken in the context of a theory of “Bimodal Federalism,” which integrates two modes of operation of modern U.S. federalism, acknowledging the trend toward the new “Dynamic Federalism” theory that normatively disregards separate constitutional spheres of authority for the state and local governments, while also incorporating the reality that remnants of “Dual Federalism” theory still inform constitutional jurisprudence related to certain subject matters—like land-use planning. Finally, based upon the transitory-perpetual spectrum categorizations and informed by bimodal federalism analysis, this Article assesses the appropriate legislative mechanisms for reconstituting land-use disaster federalism. This Article hypothesizes that those disasters closer to the perpetual end of the spectrum also happen to be the ones for which top-down federal inputs into land-use policy are both more desirable and less constitutionally suspect. Correspondingly, for land-use-related disasters that are more transitory in nature, top-down federal inputs may be more constitutionally suspect, thus calling for a need to explore bilateral and horizontal mechanisms of reconstituting federalism for all categories of disaster

Federal Constitutions: The Keystone of Nested Commons Governance

The constitutional structure of a federal system of government can undermine effective natural capital management across scales, from local to global. Federal constitutions that grant subnational governments virtually exclusive regulatory authority over certain types of natural capital appropriation — such as resources appropriated by private forest management or other land-use-related economic development activities — entrench a legally defensible natural capital commons in those jurisdictions. For example, the same constitution that may legally facilitate poor forest-management practices by private landowners in the southeastern United States may complicate international negotiations related to forest management and climate change. Both the local and international issues may remain unaddressed because the national government is not constitutionally empowered to guide subnational policy formation and therefore may not bind subnational governments to certain types of international agreements related to private forests. Though there are around 160 unitary systems of government worldwide, compared to 25 federal systems, approximately 46 percent of the world’s land base is contained within the boundaries of federal nations. For certain types of natural capital, like forests, the numbers are even starker. Though federal systems comprise approximately 13 percent of the world’s governments, they maintain control over 70 to 80 percent of the world’s forests—a resource crucial for combating climate change. Ultimately, national constitutional incapacity to participate in the direct regulation of subnational natural capital management in federal systems may legally entrench a series of natural capital commons, one nested within another: 1) private individuals may rationally appropriate natural capital within the state commons in the absence of state government rules guiding sustainable resource appropriation; 2) state governments may rationally appropriate natural capital within the national commons because the national government is not constitutionally empowered to guide resource appropriation within states; and 3) national governments may rationally appropriate resources within the global commons because subnational governments constrain federal system participation in legally binding global governance of resources. This Article introduces and describes, at the most basic level, the operation of nested natural capital commons created by certain federal structures. This description is necessarily preliminary, establishing a foundation for future detailed study of both the structure and operation of nested natural capital commons and how keystone constitutions in federal systems may be fortified to allow more effective natural capital management across local, national, and global scales