Abstracts

Presented by Charles R. Loesch - Email: chuck_loesch@fws.gov

Biodiversity offsetting, or compensatory mitigation, is increasingly being used in temperate grassland ecosystems to compensate for unavoidable environmental damage from anthropogenic developments such as transportation infrastructure, urbanization, and energy development. Pursuit of energy independence in the United States will expand domestic energy production. Concurrent with this increased growth is increased disruption to wildlife habitats, including avian displacement from suitable habitat. Studies conducted at energy-generation facilities have provided evidence for behavioral avoidance and thus reduced use of habitat by breeding waterfowl in the vicinity of energy infrastructure. To quantify and compensate for this loss in value of avian breeding habitat, it is necessary to determine a biologically-based currency so that the sufficiency of offsets in terms of biological equivalent value can be obtained. We describe a method for quantifying the amount of habitat needed to provide equivalent biological value for waterfowl and other avifauna displaced by energy and transportation infrastructure, based on the ability to define five metrics: impact distance, impact area, pre-impact density, percent displacement, and offset density. We demonstrate the applicability of our avian-impact offset method for breeding duck pairs using an example for wind-energy production. We developed a companion worksheet that informs potential users how to apply our method to their specific developments and a framework for developing decision-support tools aimed at achieving landscape-level conservation goals.