Todd Gartner of World Resources Institute updates us on the pilot candidate conservation market project for the not-yet-listed range of gopher tortoise in the Southeast US:
“A candidate conservation marketplace is a scalable, voluntary, and science-based market mechanism to spur conservation for imperiled species prior to their listing under the ESA. This approach may allow federal and private project developers, such as solar, wind and natural gas developers, to manage their environmental risk by investing in conservation on private lands in return for regulatory certainty from the USFWS.
That’s why WRI, Advanced Conservation Strategies, the American Forest Foundation, the Longleaf Alliance, and other partners are developing the demand, supply, and transactional infrastructure for such a marketplace through a pilot initiative in the nonfederally listed range of the gopher tortoise in the southern forests of the United States.”
Thank you flicker for a lovely selection of creative commons photos of said gopher tortoise.
Gopher tortoise, photo by USFWS/Southeast.
Here’s where they live – well managed longleaf pine. Photo by USFWS/Southeast.
Watch out, gopher tortoise! Photo by faul.
Gopher tortoise noodling? Yep. Video by WIDTTF.
Madsen Environmental 