Law Commons^™

Maurer Environmental Law Expert Is Lead Author On Science Insights Policy Forum Article, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Environmental champions and conservationists will mark the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act later this month. That is the law requiring federal agencies to use all methods necessary to prevent extinctions and ensure that federal actions not jeopardize the continued existence of species on the brink of disappearing from the face of the Earth.

In the leadup to the December 27th anniversary, several publications have begun examining the Act’s history and impact over five decades.

Science, the world’s third-most influential scholarly journal based on Google Scholar citations, invited experts from around the country to look ahead as well …

Maurer Environmental Law Expert Is Lead Author On Science Insights Policy Forum Article, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Indiana University Maurer and McKinney Schools of Law jointly will convene leading scholars and practitioners to discuss the implications of the 2023 United States Supreme Court case of Sackett v. EPA. The event, “Sackett v. EPA: What the Supreme Court’s Decision Means for Regulation and Wetlands Conservation,” will take place November 10 in the Wynne Courtroom and Steve Tuchman and Reed Bobrick Atrium at IU McKinney in Indianapolis.

Aba Rpte Conservation Easement Task Force Report: Recommendations Regarding Conservation Easements And Federal Tax Law, W. William Weeks

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Authors' Synopsis: In October 2015, the American Bar Association's Real Property, Trust and Estate Law (RPTE) section convened a Conservation Easement Task Force. The objective of the Task Force was to provide recommendations regarding federal tax law as it relates to conservation easements. This Report is the culmination of the Task Force's work. Part I of the Report is an Executive Summary of the Task Force's recommendations. Part II provides the background necessary to understand the Task Force's recommendations. Part III briefly sets forth the Task Force's comments on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 as it relates …

Climate Change Challenges For Land Conservation: Rethinking Conservation Easements, Strategies, And Tools, W. William Weeks, Jessica Owley, Federico Cheever, Adena R. Rissman, M. Rebecca Shaw, Barton H. Thompson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Climate change has significant consequences for land conservation. Government agencies and nonprofit land trusts heavily rely on perpetual conservation easements. However, climate change and other dynamic landscape changes raise questions about the effectiveness and adaptability of permanent conservation instruments like conservation easements. Building upon a study of 269 conservation easements and interviews with seventy conservation-easement professionals in six different states, we examine the adaptability of conservation easements to climate change. We outline four potential approaches to enhance conservation outcomes under climate change: (1) shift land-acquisition priorities to account for potential climate-change impacts; (2) consider conservation tools other than perpetual conservation …

Judging Adaptive Management Practices Of U.S. Agencies, Robert L. Fischman, J. B. Ruhl

Articles by Maurer Faculty

All U.S. federal agencies administering environmental laws purport to practice adaptive management (AM), but little is known about how they actually implement this conservation tool. A gap between the theory and practice of AM is revealed in judicial decisions reviewing agency adaptive management plans. We analyzed all U.S. federal court opinions published through 1 January 2015 to identify the agency AM practices courts found most deficient. The shortcomings included lack of clear objectives and processes, monitoring thresholds, and defined actions triggered by thresholds. This trio of agency shortcuts around critical, iterative steps characterizes what we call AM-lite. Passive AM differs …

Leveraging Federal Land Plans Into Landscape Conservation, Robert L. Fischman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Professor Fischman’s article suggests several ways in which a mandated unit-level (e.g. an individual national forest) plan can better contribute to goals of a larger region (e.g. the Willamette River watershed) and of federal agencies (e.g. mandates to maintain ecological integrity). The scientific literature is largely in agreement that achieving ecological integrity, adaptive management, and climate change resiliency all require large-scale coordination across property boundaries and jurisdictions. The author takes these widely accepted findings as a starting point and shows how public agencies can implement effective practices. The article attempts to integrate traditional regulatory analysis with actual planning practices as …

Lessons From Pollution Control: Response To Heller And Hobbs 2014, Robert L. Fischman, James Salzman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Heller and Hobbs (2014) provide an incisive analysis of the challenges inherent in setting endpoint states as conservation goals. The social construct of nature, nonequilibrium ecosystems, global climate change, large-scale transformations of the landscape, and increasing population and economic activity confound efforts to establish conservation goals. Stakeholders often disagree on endpoint targets, whereas competing notions of historic fidelity and future flexibility frustrate our ability to articulate success, never mind actually achieve it. As Heller and Hobbs describe, this leaves managers in the bind of finding the “balance between future-looking management emphasizing change and past-looking management emphasizing persistence.” As a result, …

Planning For Adaptation To Climate Change: Lessons From The Us National Wildlife Refuge System, Robert L. Fischman, Vicky J. Meretsky, Alexei Babko, Michael Kennedy, Lei Liu, Michelle Robinson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

US national wildlife refuges have recent, detailed management plans illustrating the state of planning for climate-change adaptation in protected areas. Discussion of and prescriptions for addressing climate change increased in refuge plans between 2005 and 2010 but decreased in 2011. The plans respond to some climate-change impacts on biodiversity and call for monitoring but with little clarity regarding how to act on monitoring results and scant attention to future changes in phenology and community composition. The threats posed by sea-level rise generated the best-developed plan prescriptions. Examples of excellent prescriptions provide models for future planning. Some decision-support tools, such as …

Learning From Conservation Planning For The U.S. National Wildlife Refuges, Robert L. Fischman, Vicky J. Meretsky

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The U.S. National Wildlife Refuge System has nearly completed its first round of unit-level, comprehensive conservation plans (CCPs) and will soon begin required revisions. Laws and policies governing refuge planning emphasize ecological integrity, landscape-scale conservation, and adaptive management. We evaluated 185 CCPs completed during 2005–2011, which cover 324 of 555 national wildlife refuges. We reviewed CCP prescriptions addressing 5 common conservation issues (habitat and game, nongame, imperiled, and invasive species) and 3 specialized topics (landscape-scale conservation, climate change, and environmental quality). Common conservation issues received prescriptions in >90% of CCPs. Specialized topics received more variable treatment. Prescriptions for aquatic connectivity, …

New Directions In Conservation For The National Wildlife Refuge System, Robert L. Fischman, Vicky J. Meretsky, James R. Karr, Daniel M. Ashe, Michael Scott, Reed F. Noss, Richard L. Schroeder

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 includes the nation’s broadest statutory commitment to ecosystem protection: to “ensure that the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the system are maintained.” The act also directs the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to expand the scope of conservation monitoring, assessment, and management beyond refuge boundaries to encompass surrounding landscapes. The act thus gives the FWS a leadership role in developing research and management partnerships with other agencies, organizations, and neighboring landowners. Increasing research capacity and scientific expertise, and strengthening institutional resolve to limit activities that impede the attainment …