Strategies for protecting ecosystems will affect all segments of the community — businesses, residents, tourists, and others. As a result, protection strategies produce positive results not only for the ecosystem, but also for the local economy and the community’s quality of life.

Should a local effort to protect endangered plant species proceed by regulating development? Buying conservation easements? Starting a community-based market? Curbing off-road vehicles? Encouraging better land management practices?

Because it is likely that most of the projects the community undertakes will concentrate on local activities, strategies that call upon volunteers to protect or restore the ecosystems are potentially useful. Working through the laws and programs that affect the ecosystem and are administered by the city, town, county, or other local government is another option. Certain programs and laws administered by the state and federal governments provide ecosystem protection and may provide a basis for a local protection effort. Finally, new markets are evolving that value nature’s services, and communities might wish to look at the possibility of using community-based, regional, or national markets to aid in conservation and environmental restoration.

Strategies To Consider for Ecosystem Protection

Low Cost, Immediate-Result Strategies

A number of simple voluntary activities are available to achieve ecosystem protection goals. These activities encourage community pride and may produce immediate, visible results. They include:

Tree, Grassland, or Wetland Planting or Reforestation — These activities involve planting trees, shrubs, or flowers in urban areas to improve aesthetics, or undertaking a reforestation or wetland planting program in more rural areas to improve forests that have been clear-cut or wetlands that have been damaged. These activities produce additional benefits such as lowering urban temperatures, purifying air, and controlling storm-water runoff.

Stream, Beach, or River Cleanups — Many communities have organized efforts to pick up trash and debris from rivers, beaches, or streams, either once or on an ongoing basis.

Storm Drain Stenciling — Many people do not realize that runoff collected by storm drains may pass untreated into a river or harbor. Stenciling “Do Not Dump” or other instructions on storm drains alerts community members that they should not use storm drains to dispose of used oil or other hazardous liquids.

Pollution Prevention — Recycling programs, car pooling networks, and public transportation improvements all reduce pollution at its source.

Education — Seminars at local schools can educate students about their local environment and encourage stewardship. Pamphlets encouraging recycling and explaining proper disposal of household hazardous materials or showing maps of local greenways and bike paths can increase interest in local natural resources. Some groups, such as farmers, may benefit from information on ecosystem issues specific to their occupations (for example, the importance of not filling in wetlands or benefits from reducing pesticide runoff). Community organizations and individuals also can find out more about the presence of hazardous materials in their neighborhoods through the community-right-to-know provisions that are part of the Superfund remediation program.

Amending Covenants Governing Condominium and Homeowners’ Associations — Covenants governing condominium or homeowners’ associations can address items like reducing the use of fertilizer and pesticides on lawns or prohibiting the removal of native vegetation.

Instituting Integrated Pest Management (IPM) on Farms and in Gardens — IPM minimizes pesticide use in favor of natural forms of pest control. These include introducing insects and animals that prey on the pests, rotating crops, planting two or more crops in the same field (making it harder for pests to find their targets), and many other techniques.

Encouraging and Assisting Businesses to Conduct Environmental Audits — Audits involve examining business practices to see if they are environmentally friendly (for instance, does the business recycle paper and other waste products). Often, programs to reduce waste also improve business efficiency and cost effectiveness.

Ecosystem Service Markets

In the last ten years - based upon the success of the USEPA’s air pollution markets - new markets have evolved for carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat protection, wetlands mitigation banking, and numerous other ‘ecosystem services.’ These markets operate in both regulated and voluntary ways….and at local, regional, national, and international scales. These markets are starting to demonstrate themselves as successful -both financally and environmentally.

As you have seen in a separate part of this website, the Nature Services Exchange is one of these new environmental initiatives. There are numerous examples:
Chicago Climate Exchange
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
California Climate Action Registry
Red Barn Trading
www.ecosystemmarketplace.com offers information and follows ecosystem service markets.

Land Acquisition

Land acquisition, which involves the purchase of land or a land easement, can be one of the most effective ways to preserve an ecosystem. Land conservation encompasses a number of activities, not all of which involve purchasing property outright.

Who Is Involved in Land Purchases?

The state or local government can purchase land or easements (defined below) from voluntary sellers (as opposed to exercising eminent domain) to be set aside for conservation purposes. However, many communities also have formed land trusts for this purpose. Land trusts are private nonprofit corporations that acquire land or easements. They often can move more quickly than governments, and also can interact more freely with private landowners who might be wary of working with a government agency. Large land trusts that already are established, such as The Nature Conservancy, usually focus their efforts on acquiring land with rare or highly valued species and habitat.

Local governments and land trusts may have programs to make local landowners aware of these options. Landowners may not realize that they can sell some of their property rights as easements without forfeiting the land itself. Similarly, developers may not be aware of land banking (give example) or other tools for mitigating ecosystem damage.

Tools for Land Acquisition

One way to ensure that land is protected or developed according to conservation principles is to purchase it outright (called fee simple acquisition). However, this is often very expensive. There are a number of other ways to acquire an interest in or influence over the management of a tract of land without making an outright purchase.

Easements — Through an easement, a landowner voluntarily gives up or sells specific land-use or development rights but continues to hold title to the land. The easement “runs with the land”, meaning that it remains in force even when the property changes hands. Generally, the local, state, or federal government or private land trust buys the right to build on the land, which it will never exercise, thereby preventing development. Purchases of development rights are often made in areas adjacent to urban areas, where the pressure to develop land is greatest. The government or land trust also can purchase the rights to use the land for a conservation-related purpose, such as for hiking trails. In both cases, the owner retains the rights to use the land for other purposes consistent with the easement, such as for agriculture.

Options and Rights-of-First-Refusal — Both of these tools allow a purchaser to gain time before buying land or an easement. A potential buyer can purchase an option that allows the purchase of land for a specific price within a specified period of time, during which the current landholder cannot accept any other offers to buy. Similarly, a buyer can purchase a right-of-first-refusal to a tract of land, which requires the current landholder to notify the rightsholder of any other offers made. The potential buyer then has the option of matching that offer and buying the land.

Leases and Cooperative Management Agreements — These tools allow a government or land trust to exercise control over the land without purchasing anything. Landowners either lease the land for a specified time and purpose or manage it under certain terms and conditions. The federal Conservation Reserve Program and the Wetland Reserve Program use this technique to allow farmlands to lie fallow for a period of years (usually five).

Landowners may also donate easements, options, and rights-of-first-refusal to land trusts or federal, state, or municipal governments. Such donations can improve a landowner’s tax position and can be a good estate planning strategy.

Strategies Using Local Laws

Communities often turn to local laws as a means of ecosystem protection.

Zoning Ordinances

A zoning ordinance describes the ways in which a parcel of land may be used and the intensity of that use (such as the density of development). Land is zoned for industrial, commercial, or residential development or can be set aside as farmland, forest, pasture, open space, or habitat for wildlife and recreation. Zones can encompass a small parcel of land, such as a shoreline, or can be extended to an entire watershed.

Many zoning techniques are available for protecting an ecosystem. Bonus and incentive zoning award developers supplemental development rights, such as allowing construction of more buildings, in exchange for public benefits, such as developing within urban areas instead of in outlying areas.

Buffer zones restrict activities on areas surrounding key ecosystems to minimize damage.

Floodplain protection districts, located near rivers or other flood-prone areas, generally prohibit residential and commercial development. Overlay, open-space, and conservation zones can be applied to a specific resource with defined boundaries, such as a wetland, that is already bound by a zoning ordinance. These zones apply additional restrictions on development and other activities, over and above those in the underlying ordinance, to ensure that a resource or ecosystem is protected from damage.

Other zoning approaches include cluster zoning and interim development controls. Applied to a subdivided tract, cluster zoning ensures that development is concentrated within a small portion of the tract, leaving large areas as open space.

Interim development controls include temporary ordinances, such as a moratorium on building permits or water and sewer connections, to slow growth in the short term.

Property Taxes and Municipal Fees

Taxes or fees for services can affect the behavior of residents and developers in ways that encourage ecosystem protection. For example, property tax breaks can be given in return for agreements from landowners to protect habitat on their property or to leave their property’s shoreland in a natural state. Alternatively, localities can preferentially assess properties for taxes at a portion of their value if used in a manner consistent with conservation goals (such as farming) or if left in a natural state (such as a forestland). Increases in building permit processing fees can discourage building or help fund conservation activities.

Performance Standards

Some localities have begun to enact standards that not only control general uses, such as commercial or industrial development, but also establish strict guidelines for how tracts of land can be developed, regardless of use. For example, some towns regulate the placement or servicing of septic systems. Alternatively, localities can assign a tract of land with an impervious surface ratio that limits the amount of space that can be covered by roads, sidewalks, parking, and other impenetrable surfaces. This is intended to limit runoff and other environmental problems and to encourage the use o gravel driveways or reduce the size of parking lots. Finally, municipalities can require developers and other parties to purchase performance bonds, which insure the locality against damage caused to ecosystems. Developers, for example, would purchase these bonds from the local government. If ecosystems are damaged, the municipality can use those funds to repair the damage.

Transfers of Development Rights (TDRs)

TDRs involve transferring the rights to develop a site or building, or a portion of a site or building (including the “air rights” above it), to another site or building. The state or county separates the rights to build on a site from the deed, and allows the landowner to sell these rights to a developer looking to develop in a predesignated “receiving” area where the community wants to concentrate growth. This often allows the developer to exceed a zoning limit on the new site or building. TDRs can be used to protect farms, forests, and other areas by shifting development from one area and concentrating that development elsewhere. (See the earlier description of the Philadelphia GreenSpaceinitiative.)

Growth Planning in Local Communities

Many communities are developing comprehensive growth management plans that combine a number of land-use strategies in an effort to concentrate development within the city limits. Growth management techniques include:

Development of “Brownfields” Sites — Using cluster or bonus zoning, communities can encourage re-development of “brownfields” sites, underutilized or abandoned areas such as railroad yards, warehouses, docks, or industrial sites. Because these areas are usually near or in the urban core of the community, this type of development both revitalizes urban areas and curbs sprawl by reducing pressure to develop industrial areas outside of town.

Infill and Minimum-Density Requirements — Infill development targets existing but underused urban or suburban areas for development. If pockets of undeveloped or less developed land exist in these areas, communities can set infill or minimum-density requirements to increase development there. This reduces pressure to build in undeveloped areas.

Urban Service Limits and Urban Limit Lines — These techniques mark the farthest reaches of city services as well as the edges of the city itself. To restrict development to city areas, planners can limit the degree to which utility extensions (such as sewer lines) are granted beyond the city boundaries.

Adequate Public Facilities Requirements — These requirements limit development to levels that the infrastructure currently can support and mandate that future funding sources for infrastructure be identified in all plans for new development.

Increasing Public Transportation — Primarily intended to mitigate air pollution, this technique involves increasing bus and subway service, implementation of high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) designations for commuter traffic, installing bike lanes and paths, creating pedestrian walkways, and designing other measures to reduce the use of personal automobiles.

Strategies Based On Federal and State Laws and Programs

Federal and state laws address a wide range of environmental issues. Regulations issued under federal and state laws set limits on releases of toxic substances, require cleanup of contaminated sites (sometimes with government funding), or control specific practices (such as the management of underground storage tanks). Many laws require public notice and comment, offering communities a way to participate in the regulatory process. Some laws provide for citizen law suits to enforce their provisions or impose penalties for violations. This section describes relevant federal and state laws and discusses how to work with them.

Federal and State Laws Affecting Ecosystems

Federal and state lawmakers have introduced an extensive set of laws designed to protect the environment. A complete discussion of these laws would be far too lengthy for this resource book. However, State laws complement and expand upon many of the federal laws. They often are enacted when states want more stringent environmental requirements than those called for by the federal government, where the state has been delegated responsibility for implementation of a federal program, or when there is a specific, unique ecosystem or problem area that the state government wishes to regulate. For example, state laws may address coastal management issues, severe air pollution (California), or widespread hazardous waste contamination (New Jersey).

In addition, statewide growth management laws have been enacted by mant states. Of these, several have policies for curbing urban sprawl that require or encourage contained development and strive to protect rural and natural areas.

Working With Federal and State Laws

The following are examples of how federal and state laws and regulations may interact with communities’ ecosystem protection efforts:

Public Disclosure and Community Involvement Laws — Many laws have been enacted in recent years to promote the public disclosure of information. These include, for example, the Toxic Release Inventory, the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process described above, the Freedom of Information Act, which provides citizens the right to access to all types of federal government information (except national security or confidential business information), and requirements under the Intermodel Surface Transportation and Efficiency Act (ISTEA) and the Clean Air Act (CAA) for government evaluation of the impacts of development.

Land-Use Planning — The many land-use requirements and grant programs in federal laws (e.g., the Clean Air Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, and the Flood Insurance Act) support growth management and protection and restoration of habitats, farms, forests, wetlands, and open space.

Supplemental Enforcement Program — The U.S. EPA’s Supplemental Enforcement Program (SEP) is a compliance agreement program whereby the EPA requires public or private groups that have violated an EPA-administered law to restore or protect habitats or to modify their operations in an environmentally beneficial way, rather than paying a fine. Communities can be involved in negotiating a SEP agreement.

You can contact federal and state governments through their public information offices, or you can contact the office in the relevant state agency that administers the program you’re interested in. The offices can provide you with information on the specific requirements and resources of their programs.