Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

Abstract

This essay reviews two habitat conservation and planning initiatives undertaken by the Obama administration that relied on and envisioned extraordinary cooperation between the federal and state governments in order to overcome, or at least lessen, the disruptive impacts of jurisdictional lines on effective and comprehensive habitat conservation. These initiatives are the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) in California and the sage grouse conservation planning effort across eleven western states. Both initiatives embraced the common sense goal of coordinating development and conservation management across jurisdictional boundaries. In both initiatives, however, cooperation was motivated and sustained by specific legal and policy imperatives that commanded a joint effort. In the Trump era to date, these imperatives, which are described below, remain mostly unchanged, notwithstanding shifts in federal policy favoring traditional energy development on the public lands. In a rational world unmanipulated by politics, these imperatives should operate to further promote-or, at the very least, to maintain intact-these collaborative conservation efforts.

Publication Citation

13 FIU L. Rev. 103 (2018).

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