Conservation Planning & Mitigation for Greater Sage-Grouse and Other Species Sensitive to Indirect Effects

Species, such as greater sage-grouse, that are sensitive to the indirect effects of anthropogenic disturbance require a landscape-scale conservation planning and mitigation approach that:

• Targets, tracks and reports conservation investments based on changes to habitat function, including both the quantity and quality of habitat;
• Accounts for both direct and indirect effects of anthropogenic disturbances across the landscape; and
• Requires the full mitigation of permitted anthropogenic disturbances remaining after complying with avoidance and minimization policies.

Management approaches that focus only on direct effects of anthropogenic disturbances, even when limited to a strict disturbance cap or mitigation ratios, have the potential to allow dispersed disturbances to impact high quality or limiting habitat without the requirement to replace the habitat functionality that is lost.

Innovative programs, such as the Nevada Conservation Credit System and Colorado Habitat Exchange, are bringing stakeholders together to collaboratively address this need by establishing a conservation planning and mitigation framework that tracks quantified impacts and benefits in terms of functional-acres. Functional-acres account for both the quantity and quality of habitat impacted or benefited, and also incorporate indirect effects of anthropogenic disturbance on species.

This approach and these programs enable agencies to target investments of limited state and federal conservation funding to actions where they create the most functional value for species. This approach also establishes a rigorous mitigation framework that reinforces avoidance and minimization policies by increasing compensatory mitigation obligations if direct or indirect impacts degrade high quality, limiting habitats in high priority areas for conservation.