Environmental Defense Supports Effort to Create National Conservation Banking for Endangered Species Habitat

Contact:

Sharyn Stein, 202-572-3396 sstein@environmentaldefense.org

Sean Crowley, 202-572-3331 scrowley@environmentaldefense.org

(Washington, DC – October 20, 2007) — Environmental Defense is supportive of the effort to develop Recovery Credit Trading as a new tool to aid in the conservation of imperiled species. Environmental Defense has participated actively in the development and testing of a prototype recovery credit trading system in the area around Fort Hood Army Base in Texas.

“The effort in Texas has been very promising and could be a useful model for similar efforts for other rare species in other parts of the country” said David Wolfe, a biologist in Environmental Defense’s Austin, Texas, office who has helped design the effort around Fort Hood.

“Recovery Credit Trading is a potentially powerful incentive to encourage many private landowners to invest in conservation efforts for rare species on their land,” added Michael J. Bean, an Environmental Defense attorney who has worked on endangered species conservation issues for three decades. “However, the devil is in the details, which we don’t know yet.”

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