ELI examines federal, state, and local measures to protect water resources and assure their availability for use while maintaining ecological and hydrological integrity of watersheds, estuaries, basins, and groundwater systems. ELI's Sustainable Use of Land in the Chesapeake Bay Program also works to promote new tools that support smart growth and reinvestment across the Bay states.
Priority Areas of Expertise and Resources:
Paying landowners not to pollute, providing free technical advice, and relying on voluntary adherence to BMPs has proven to be an incomplete strategy in many cases. Gradually, states are turning to enforceable mechanisms — including discharge prohibitions, direct enforcement of water quality standards, pollution abatement orders, required operating practices, nuisance and misdemeanor prosecutions, and civil and administrative penalties — to supplement other approaches.
Landscape prioritization tools - landscape metrics or indeces that generate an output corresponding to one or more prioritization objectives based on a set of data factor inputs - may be used by regulatory and non-regulatory wetland programs at the local, state, and national levels to guide prioritization of wetland protection and restoration that best meet one or more objectives.
Between July 2011 and May 2012, ELI interviewed 30 programs that have developed landscape analysis tools for prioritizing the selection of aquatic resource conservation sites. These programs, in addition to the specific tools identified for each, are listed below.
Wetland Prioritization Study Main Page
Every year, human activities cause significant harm to fish and wildlife habitat and the environment. Many of the impacts to these natural resources are never addressed. In certain cases, however, federal, state, and local laws and programs can require monetary or in-kind compensation for these impacts. A new ELI report, "Mitigation of Impacts to Fish and Wildlife Habitat: Estimating Costs and Identifying Opportunities," estimates that private and public expenditures for such compensation under key federal programs total up to $3.8 billion annually.
ELI has collaborated with the Friends of the Capt. John Smith Chesapeake Trail, and the National Geographic Society to produce this appendix, along with the special report and map that recommend the development of a bold and coordinated strategy for conserving the Chesapeake’s treasured landscapes and calling for more federal investment in land conservation.
