Law Commons^™

Cultural Heritage Conservation Easements: The Problem Of Using Property Law Tools For Heritage Protection, Jessica Owley

Journal Articles

Conservation easements are quickly becoming a favored tool for protection of cultural heritage. Perpetual encumbrances on the use of private land, most cultural heritage conservation easements are held by private conservation organizations known as land trusts. With minimal public oversight, land trusts decide which lands to protect in perpetuity and what the rules regarding use of those lands should be. A variety of concerns arise when protection of cultural heritage resides with private organizations. First, as governments abdicate cultural heritage protection to private organizations, the public’s role in site protection shifts. When private organizations and landowners negotiate which properties to …

Hyperlegality And Heightened Surveillance: The Case Of Threatened Species Lists, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

My contribution to the Debate "Thinking about Law and Surveillance" focuses on the project of governing nonhuman species through care, briefly pointing to how law and surveillance are interwoven in this context and to how conservation's biopolitical regimes are increasingly becoming more abstract, standardized, calculable, and algorithmic in scope. I argue that conservation’s focus on governing through care lends itself to heightened modes of surveillance and to hyperlegality - namely, to the intensified inspection and regulation of both governed and governing actors. I start with some preliminary explanations about my atypical use of the terms surveillance, law, and biopolitics.

Is The Puerto Rican Parrot Worth Saving? The Biopolitics Of Endangerment And Grievability, Irus Braverman

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 5 in Economies of Death: Economic Logics of Killable Life and Grievable Death, Patricia J. Lopez & Kathryn A. Gillespie, eds.

“Is the Puerto Rican Worth Saving? The Biopolitics of Endangerment and Grievability” describes how threatened species lists elevate listed nonhuman species from the realm of biological life into that of a political life that is both worth saving and worth grieving. The chapter provides a novel perspective on the biopolitics of lists that highlights both their affirmative properties and their acute relevance for understanding the governance of entire nonhuman species.

Conservation And Hunting: Till Death Do They Part? A Legal Ethnography Of Deer Management, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

Claims that hunters are exemplar conservationists would likely come as a surprise to many. Hunters, after all, kill animals. Isn’t there a better way to appreciate wildlife than to kill and consume it? Yet there is no mistake: wildlife managers frequently make the claim that hunters, in the United States at least, are in fact some of the greatest conservationists. This article explores the complex historical and contemporary entanglements between hunting and wildlife conservation in the United States from a regulatory perspective. Such entanglements are multifaceted: hunting provides substantial financial support for conservation and hunters are the state’s primary tools …

En-Listing Life: Red Is The Color Of Threatened Species Lists, Irus Braverman

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 11 in Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections and Heirarchies in a Multispecies World, Kathryn Gillespie & Rosemary-Claire Collard, eds.

The idea that every species should be assessed, ranked, and listed according to its projected risk of extinction is now a commonly accepted practice in conservation. Threatened species lists rank species in a linear progression from the least to the most endangered. This chapter explores the biopolitical nature of such lists. It shows how listing threatened species becomes a way to affirm — and justify — that life which is more and most important to save. The chapter …

It's Not Just The Effort That Counts: Conservation Endangerment For At-Risk Species, Robert T. Caccese

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

The listing determination factors nestled within Section 4 of the Endangered Species Act can be best described as the controversial heart and soul of the statute. Federal courts, charged with reviewing listing determinations, need specific criteria to provide better consistency and clarityfor the arbitrary and capricious judicial review standard In its current state, the standard has not been stated with any particularity, leaving adequacy to be based upon case-specific analysis by various federal judges regarding listing decisions of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Most crucial are contexts pertaining to conservation effort reliance. Federal agencies' increased reliance on agreements and …

Evaluating Hydraulic Fracturing Regulation Under A Theory Of Strict Liability, Michael R. Lieberman

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Keeping Track Of Conservation, Jessica Owley

Journal Articles

Throughout the world, governments require land protection in exchange for development permits. Unfortunately, oftentimes scant attention has been paid to these land protection programs after development. Agencies and permit applicants agree on mitigation rules, but there appears to be little follow-up. When we do not know where conservation is occurring and cannot determine the rules of mitigation projects, the likelihood that they will be successful or enforced diminishes. I journeyed to California in search of answers by tracing four mitigation plans associated with the Federal Endangered Species Act. While I anticipated some difficulties, the tale is more alarming than expected. …

A Response To The Ipcc Fifth Assessment, Sarah J. Adams-Schoen, Deepa Badrinarayana, Cinnamon Carlarne, Robin Kundis Craig, John C. Dernbach, Keith H. Hirokawa, Alexandra B. Klass, Katrina Fischer Kuh, Stephen R. Miller, Jessica Owley, Shannon M. Roesler, Jonathan Rosenbloom, Inara Scott, David Takacs

Journal Articles

This collection of essays is the initial product of the second meeting of the Environmental Law Collaborative, a group of environmental law scholars that meet to discuss important and timely environmental issues. Here, the group provides an array of perspectives arising from the Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Each scholar chose one passage from one of the IPCC’s three Summaries for Policymakers as a jumping-off point for exploring climate change issues and responding directly to the reports. The result is a variety of viewpoints on the future of how law relates to climate change, a result …

Preservation Is A Flawed Mitigation Strategy, Jessica Owley

Journal Articles

The objective of the Clean Water Act is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters. To help achieve that objective, the Clean Water Act limits the ability to dredge or fill a wetland. To do so, one must first obtain a section 404 permit. These permits, which are issued by the Army Corps of Engineers (“Corps”) with coordination and oversight from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), require project proponents to avoid, minimize, and compensate the harms of any wetland destruction or modification. Compensatory mitigation is a troubling concept in wetlands regulation because it …

Adapting Conservation Easements To Climate Change, Adena R. Rissman, Jessica Owley, M. Rebecca Shaw, Barton H. Thompson Jr.

Journal Articles

Perpetual conservation easements (CEs) are popular for restricting development and land use, but their fixed terms create challenges for adaptation to climate change. The increasing pace of environmental and social change demands adaptive conservation instruments. To examine the adaptive potential of CEs, we surveyed 269 CEs and interviewed 73 conservation organization employees. Although only 2% of CEs mentioned climate change, the majority of employees were concerned about climate change impacts. CEs share the fixed-boundary limits typical of protected areas with additional adaptation constraints due to permanent terms on private lands. CEs often have multiple, potentially conflicting purposes that protect against …