How Wide is Wide Enough?: Science, Values, and Law in Riparian Habitat Conservation

Difficult environmental policy issues often elicit fervent declarations to “follow the science.” Such declarations ignore the essential role of values in policy making. The main purpose of this article is to clarify the relationships among science, values, and law in environmental policy. An important policy issue in wildlife conservation, is determining “how much is enough?” That is, what is the smallest amount of habitat or minimum population size that is adequate for the long-term survival of wildlife populations? This paper presents three case studies in which policy makers decided how much was enough for protecting freshwater salmonid habitats. The case studies are the federal Northwest Forest Plan, the Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for Washington’s forested trust lands, and the HCP for Washington’s forest practices rules. Because all three plans were developed for the same habitats and species in the same region over a span of roughly seven years, all drew from the same body of science. Hence, the differences among the conservation plans cannot be attributed to differences in the available science. We explain how differences in habitat conservation were largely due to differences in societal values that were expressed through different legal frameworks. The legal frameworks established unique policy decision spaces for each plan. Strong leadership, vague or ambiguous statutory language, and commitments to adaptive management expanded the decision space for policy makers. Our case studies also show how values affected each plan through negotiations amongst stakeholders and/or leadership by key political figures. By appropriately integrating science and values these conservation plans led to lawful resolutions of a difficult environmental policy issue but in different ways. The lessons learned are highly relevant to other environmental issues

Willamette Valley-PugetTrough-Georgia Basin ecoregional assessment

This assessment is intended to help conservation agencies, planners and organizations direct their resources to the most important places for supporting the ecoregion's biodiversity.Keywords: Puget Trough ecoregion, Georgia Basin ecoregion, Willamette Valley ecoregio

A Paris-like agreement for biodiversity needs IPCC-like science

Maintaining or restoring at least 50% of Earth’s land area as intact, natural ecosystems has been proposed as a solution to the world’s current biodiversity crisis. Several recent papers published in peer-reviewed journals claim that this proposal, widely known as Half Earth, is supported by science. I present a detailed review of the current state of the science “supporting” Half Earth to show that our current lack of knowledge regarding its potential ecological effects preclude rational, evidence-based judgments about Half Earth. Before it can be adopted through intergovernmental agreement, the science supporting Half Earth should be vetted through an IPCC-like organization. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has an institutional framework that can provide IPCC-like science, and it should assess the potential effects of Half Earth and other global biodiversity conservation strategies. Specifically, the IPBES could assess and summarize for policymakers what is currently known about: (1) the amount of protected area (relative to ecoregion area) needed to achieve different biodiversity conservation objectives; (2) effectiveness and efficiency of protected areas relative to other conservation strategies; (3) likelihood of different land-area targets and other strategies successfully achieving conservation objectives; (4) feasibility and relative costs of different protected land-area targets versus other strategies, and (5) plausible economic and social impacts of different land-area targets and other global conservation strategies

The Puget Sound Watershed Characterization Project – landscape scale assessments of watershed processes and habitats to inform regional and local planning

Watersheds typically contain multiple jurisdictions that independently develop land use plans which primarily rely on reach and site specific regulations to protect aquatic resources. This fragmented planning approach largely fails to address the condition of physical processes operating at a watershed scale that drive and sustain aquatic ecosystems at the site and reach scale. Though both the scientific understanding of watersheds at the landscape scale and assessment methods for characterizing them have rapidly advanced, incorporation of this information into reach and site scale planning has been slow. The Puget Sound Characterization Project , lead by the Washington Departments of Ecology and Fish and Wildlife, offers a model of how local governments working in conjunction with scientists from state regulatory agencies can begin to effectively incorporate watershed scale information into local land use plans. The Puget Sound Watershed Characterization Project has developed a series of coarse-scale assessments at the watershed scale of the relative value of water flow and water quality processes1, and habitats (terrestrial, freshwater (lotic), and marine shorelines)2 throughout Puget Sound. These assessment results have been applied by local governments at both a local and regional scale for sub-area plans, in lieu fee and transfer of development rights plans, stormwater retrofit plans and other efforts by local governments to protect and restore areas critical to watershed processes and functions. A website, web-map tool and users guide3 have been developed to improve access to the geospatial data, and provide a framework which guides local and regional planners in the use of the assessments for their own planning purposes. 1Volume 1: The Water Resources Assessments (Water Flow and Water Quality) 2Volume 2: A Coarse-Scale Assessment of the Relative Value of Small Drainage Areas for the Conservation for Terrestrial and Freshwater Habitats in the Puget Sound Basin 3Volume 3: Users Guide for Puget Sound Watershed Characterization (Draft

New Culvert Projections for Washington State: Improved Modeling, Probabilistic Projections, and an Updated Web Tool

This report marks the third phase in a multi-phase project. We developed new streamflow projections, using new dynamically downscaled projections, which are expected to better capture changes in climate at the local level than the statistically downscaled projections used in phases one and two. These new projections, and a new approach to estimating the probability of structure failure, are currently being incorporated into a major update of the Fish and Wildlife tool.North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Cente

Conflation of Values and Science: Response to Noss

Article appears in journal ""Conservation Biology."" | 26 Conservation Biology 943-944 | 201

PNWCoast_Final_Main_Report_Aug21.pdf

This is an integrated assessment across terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal marine realms. It includes the coast range of Oregon and Washington as well as Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The marine portion only includes the coastline and shallow subtidal; the next iteration will include the offshore component

Pacific Northwest Coast ecoregional assessment

This is an integrated assessment across terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal marine realms. It includes the coast range of Oregon and Washington as well as Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The marine portion only includes the coastline and shallow subtidal; the next iteration will include the offshore component

Pacific Northwest Coast ecoregional assessment : appendices

This is an integrated assessment across terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal marine realms. It includes the coast range of Oregon and Washington as well as Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The marine portion only includes the coastline and shallow subtidal; the next iteration will include the offshore component