Taylor & Doremus on Habitat Conservation Plans and Climate Change

Melinda Taylor (Texas) & Holly Doremus (Berkeley) have posted Habitat Conservation Plans and Climate Change: Recommendations for Policy on SSRN.  Here's the abstract:

The first habitat conservation plan (“HCP”) – the San Bruno Mountain HCP – was approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1986 and covered 3,500 acres. Since 1986, approximately 670 HCPs have been approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (“Services”). They cover almost 47 million acres of land with diverse habitats, including Florida scrub, long leaf pine, limestone karst, Southwest desert, and old growth timber. The vast majority of HCPs have been approved since January 1998, a reflection of the success of policies developed during the Clinton Administration and refined during the Bush Administration that were designed to provide incentives for landowners to protect rare habitats. The Services published their “Habitat Conservation Planning and Incidental Take Permit Processing Handbook” (“Handbook”) in 1996 and an addendum to the Handbook in 2000. The Handbook provides guidance to the Services on the processing of HCPs and the public when preparing HCPs and navigating through the regulatory process.

Climate change is not mentioned in the Endangered Species Act, its implementing regulations, or the HCP Handbook. The impact of climate change on threatened and endangered species and their habitats was not considered by Congress when the Endangered Species Act (the “Act” or “ESA”) was passed, or by the Services when the regulations and Handbook were written. But it is apparent today that climate change is having an impact on fish and wildlife and, even if aggressive mitigation strategies are implemented in the near term, will continue to affect natural systems for decades to come. The Services recognize this and have announced a Climate Action Plan that includes a series of implementation measures, including a commitment to identify which species are most at risk from climate change and to revise Service policies to take climate change into account.

This paper briefly sketches the challenges that climate change poses for successful habitat conservation planning, highlights key policy issues, and makes recommendations at several levels. First, we identify significant overarching complexities associated with addressing climate change in HCPs and recommend steps to address them. Second, at a detailed level, we identify key provisions in the Services’ regulations and the Handbook that seem to be at odds, some requiring that climate change be taken into account while others complicate that task, and recommend revisions to facilitate consideration of climate change impacts on species. Improving the use of adaptive management in HCPs is critical. Finally, we suggest that effective conservation planning in the face of climate change requires that habitat conservation planning be considered in the larger geographic and policy context, and coordinated with other conservation practices. Many, though perhaps not all, of our recommendations may be considered as “best practices” for habitat conservation planning, irrespective of the existence of climate change as an additional stressor.