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Transforming (Perceived) Rigidity In Environmental Law Through Adaptive Governance, J.B. Ruhl, Hannah Gosnell, Brian C. Chaffin, Craig A. Arnold
Transforming (Perceived) Rigidity In Environmental Law Through Adaptive Governance, J.B. Ruhl, Hannah Gosnell, Brian C. Chaffin, Craig A. Arnold
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is often portrayed as a major source of instability and crisis in river basins of the U. S. West, where the needs of listed fish species frequently clash with agriculture dependent on federal irrigation projects subject to ESA Section 7 prohibitions on federal agency actions likely to jeopardize listed species or adversely modify critical habitat. Scholarship on Section 7 characterizes the process as unwaveringly rigid, the legal hammer forcing federal agencies to consider endangered species needs when proposing operations and management plans for federally funded irrigation. In this paper, we identify barriers to an integrated …
Harmonizing Distributed Energy And The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Harmonizing Distributed Energy And The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article explores the intersection of utility-scale wind power development and the Endangered Species Act, which thus far has not been as happy a union as one might expect. Part I provides background on how the ESA and wind power have met in policy, permitting, and litigation. Part II then examines whether wind power (and other renewable energy sources) can and should receive a green pass under the ESA given its unquestioned climate change mitigation benefits, concluding that doing so would face a host of legal and policy concerns. Part III then outlines a model for administrative innovation of ESA …
Harmonizing Commercial Wind Power And The Endangered Species Act Through Administrative Reform, J.B. Ruhl
Harmonizing Commercial Wind Power And The Endangered Species Act Through Administrative Reform, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article explores the intersection of utility-scale wind power development and the Endangered Species Act, which thus far has not been as happy a union as one might expect. Part I provides background on how the ESA and wind power have met in policy, permitting, and litigation. Part II then examines whether wind power (and other renewable energy sources) can and should receive a green pass under the ESA given its unquestioned climate change mitigation benefits, concluding that doing so would face a host of legal and policy concerns. Part III then outlines a model for administrative innovation of ESA …
Keeping The Endangered Species Act Relevant, J.B. Ruhl
Keeping The Endangered Species Act Relevant, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has long been the workhorse of species protection in contexts for which a species-specific approach can effectively be employed to address discrete human-induced threats that have straightforward causal connections to the decline of a species, such as clearing of occupied habitat for development or damming of a river. Its resounding success there, however, has led to the misperception that it can duplicate that record anywhere and for any reason a species is at risk. Yet, is the statute adaptable to the sprawling, sometimes global, phenomena that are wearing down our environmental fabric on landscape scales …
The Battle Over Endangered Species Act Methodology, J.B. Ruhl
The Battle Over Endangered Species Act Methodology, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The substantive contours of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have been largely worked out for quite some time. Starting in the mid-1990s, however, opponents of Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service decisions realized that the methodological contours of the ESA were not nearly as settled as their substantive kin. Industry and environmental interests alike appreciate that how these methodological rules get worked out could revolutionize the ESA for decades to come, and during the 1990s they opened the debate over ESA methodology and have been going strong at it ever since. This Article explores the breadth and …
Past, Present, And Future Trends Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Past, Present, And Future Trends Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
this article is designed to convince readers that the past, present, and future trends of the ESA are all the same. To provide context, Part I presents a brief overview of the structure of the statute and the kinds of decisions that must be made under it. Part II delves more deeply into each of the topics covered in the NR&E issues, eight in all, providing in each case the necessary legal background followed by a discussion of how the topic played out in the two NR&E issues. Finally, I conclude with a brief summary of my own perspectives on …
Endangered Species Act Innovations In The Post-Babbittonian Era--Are There Any?, J.B. Ruhl
Endangered Species Act Innovations In The Post-Babbittonian Era--Are There Any?, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
One of the mysteries of environmental policy in the Bush Administration will be how and why it squandered an opportunity to continue market-based administrative reforms of the Endangered Species Act begun, ironically, in the Clinton Administration under the direction of then Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. This article traces the momentum built for reform in the Babbittonian era and examines what has not happened since then.
Taking Adaptive Management Seriously: A Case Study Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Taking Adaptive Management Seriously: A Case Study Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
If one compares the way in which the ESA was implemented in 1982 to the way it is today, the list of differences would far outweigh the similarities. Indeed, the ESA has been transformed so much through administrative reform toward the ecosystem management model, I have dared to suggest elsewhere that it has earned the seal of eco-pragmatism. In this Article, I explore the related question such an assertion necessarily begs-has the ESA also earned the seal of adaptive management?... Part I of the Article provides the legal and ecological background necessary to appreciate the need for ecosystem management, and …
Who Needs Congress? An Agenda For Administrative Reform Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Who Needs Congress? An Agenda For Administrative Reform Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article comprehensively examines the history and content of the numerous administrative reforms of the Endangered Species Act program carried out under the tenure of Department of the Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. The assessment is that these reforms provide a tremendous impetus for innovation of species conservation.
Regional Habitat Conservation Planning Under The Endangered Species Act: Pushing The Legal And Practical Limits Of Species Protection, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
To many, the ESA is the epitome of an anti-growth agenda, seemingly used as a pretext for stopping development rather than for the ostensible purpose of species protection. To its staunch supporters, however, the ESA represents one of the purest statements of the environmentalist ethic and a powerful weapon against the ravaging of spaceship Earth. To those who work with the ESA on a regular basis, it, like many other environmental laws, has its good and bad points ... This Article does not attempt to resolve all the compelling questions posed by the conflicting policy objectives associated with the ESA. …