In a recent op-ed, the head of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) called for “preventative care” for species that are facing potential listings under the Endangered Species Act, noting it would be a “shift in the way we think about conservation.” In particular, he said that collaborative efforts such as “habitat exchanges”—a new EDF program working with ranchers, developers, academics, and others—would bring “the ‘sharing economy’ to conservation.”
RFF’s James Boyd describes improvements to ESA implementation as a “collective challenge” that creates “a sense of shared urgency and calls for cooperation and collaboration.” He and RFF colleague Rebecca Epanchin-Niell recently convened a set of workshop with representatives from government, industry, and NGOs where they identified various areas of collaborative opportunity, such as streamlining listing determinations by analyzing status, threats, and recovery based on species' biological and ecological similarities and the early identification of species whose listing would be most economically significant, among others. Read the full workshop proceedings or learn more about RFF’s work on endangered species.
RFF on the Issues connects today’s pressing news with related research and expertise at RFF.
