Environmental Law Commons^™

Connecting Ecosystem Services Science And Policy In The Field, J. B. Ruhl, James Salzman, Craig A. Arnold, Robin Craig, Keith Hirokawa, Lydia Olander, Margaret Palmer, Taylor H. Ricketts

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Conservation and provision of ecosystem services (ES) have been adopted as high-level policy in many countries, yet there has been surprisingly little application of these broad policies in the field; for example, ES are rarely considered in permit issuance or other discrete agency actions. This large implementation gap arises in part because the science that drove general policy interest in ES differs from the science needed for practical application. A better understanding of the environmental policy toolkit can guide more effective research to support agency decisions. Here, we outline the framework used to teach environmental policy instruments through the “Five …

Saving Our Wilderness (And Ourselves) Starts At Home: Local Conservation With An Emphasis On Watershed Protection, Brandon Mayes

NCCU Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Gap-Filling Role Of Private Environmental Governance, Jim Rossi, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Ian Faucher

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Private environmental governance provides new tools that can fill gaps in government regulatory regimes. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a valuable case study for testing the efficacy of private environmental governance because it is one of the largest utility carbon emitters and is largely insulated from near-term federal and state government pressure to reduce emissions. TVA is not on a trajectory to achieve the decarbonization targets necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, but private governance initiatives can motivate TVA to accelerate its decarbonization process. TVA's securities filings acknowledge that it faces material threats on the energy …

The Business Of Heritage In Singapore: Money, Politics & Identity, Kevin Tan

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Singapore is one of the most rational and unsentimental places on earth. Its government prides itself on its pragmatic approach to policy-making, and is not afraid to slaughter sacred cows if they have to. This is perhaps most dramatically demonstrated by the radical modernization of Singapore’s built environment through its various Master Plans and public housing programmes. This massive physical transformation is perhaps modern Singapore’s most visible sign of progress. In such a milieu, ‘heritage’ is viewed more as a commodity to be bargained over than a common good in itself. The discussion over whether a building should be preserved …

Institutional Framework For Open Space Conservation, Janice Griffith

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Finding an effective approach to conserve large-scale, multipurpose open spaces through a coordinated network across jurisdictional boundary lines has proved elusive. Because open space infrastructure serves so many functions ranging from recreational trails to ecological systems protection, decision makers have often treated open space as a subpart of another activity and overlooked its importance. After discussing the benefits of open space conservation, this article analyzes the impediments to its realization. Noting the institutional fragmentation that surrounds open space conservation, the article discusses the governmental and private sector bodies that implement actions designed to achieve it. The article argues that open …

The Incidental Environmental Agency, Tara K. Righetti

Utah Law Review

State oil and gas conservation agencies are the gatekeepers to oil and gas development: as the agencies charged with granting drilling permits, they decide if, when, where, and how oil and gas will be developed. As such, oil and gas conservation agencies sit on the front lines in the emerging, and increasingly irresolvable, struggle between fossil energy development and the environment. Current oil and gas conservation regulation is designed to promote development, maximize recovery of the resource, and protect the individual property rights of mineral owners. However, advocacy by environmental constituencies, including surface owners and local governments, has challenged the …

Legal Limits On Recreational Fishing Near Offshore Wind Facilities, Kaitlynn Webster, Read Porter

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

No abstract provided.

The Wild And Scenic Rivers Act At 50: Overlooked Watershed Protection, Michael C. Blumm, Max M. Yoklic

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (WSRA) marked its fiftieth anniversary in 2018 without much fanfare. The WSRA has been somewhat overshadowed by the Wilderness Act, which preceded it by four years, and by the National Environmental Policy Act and the pollution control statutes which followed in the 1970s. But the WSRA was a significant conservation achievement, has now extended its protections to over 200 rivers, and has the potential to provide watershed protection to many more in the future. This article explains the statute and its implementation over the last half-century as well as a number of challenges to …

The Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary: An Exploration Of Changing The Discourse On Conservation, Arielle Ben-Hur

Pitzer Senior Theses

In 2015, the Northern Chumash Tribal Council submitted a National Marine Sanctuary Nomination to establish the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary– a means by which to ensure the protection of one of the most culturally and biologically diverse coastlines in the world. On October 5, 2015, John Armor of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) responded to the nomination, adding it to the inventory of areas NOAA may consider in the future for national marine sanctuary designation.

In my thesis, I explore how the nomination of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary acts as a platform from which Traditional …

How Two Sunken Ships Caused A War: The Legal And Cultural Battle Between Great Britain, Canada, And The Inuit Over The Franklin Expedition Shipwrecks, Christina Labarge

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Advancing The Aquaculture Industry Through The Federal Crop Insurance Program, Matthew H. Bowen

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

In recent times, the aquaculture industry has experienced dramatic growth. The growth of the industry is a direct result of an increase in demand for seafood, and a decrease in supply from wild fisheries. The industry, however, is also experiencing growing pains. Aquaculture species, compared to their wild counterparts, are at a higher risk of catastrophic loss from a variety of different perils. These perils make investment in the aquaculture industry significantly risky. The federal crop insurance program could be a tool that mitigates these risks, but the program was designed around terrestrial agriculture, and while aquaculture may be covered …

Law School News: Marine Law Symposium At Rwu Law To Focus On Legal Strategies For Climate Adaptation 11/08/2018, Edward Fitzpatrick

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Public-Private Conservation Agreements And The Greater Sage-Grouse, Justin R. Pidot

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In 2015, the Obama Administration announced its conservation plans for the greater sage-grouse, an iconic bird of the intermountain west.Political leadership at the time described those plans as the “largest landscape-level conservation effort in U.S. history,”and they served as the foundation for a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) that a listing of the bird was not warranted under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). The Trump Administration appears poised to substantially amend the plans, although an array of interested parties have urged that the plans be left intact. Regardless of the outcome of this debate, conservation of …

Friends Of Animals V. United States Fish & Wildlife Service, Bradley E. Tinker

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Friends of Animals v. United States Fish & Wildlife Service, the Ninth Circuit held that the plain language of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act allows for the removal of one species of bird to benefit another species. Friends of Animals argued that the Service’s experiment permitting the taking of one species––the barred owl––to advance the conservation of a different species––the northern spotted owl––violated the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The court, however, found that the Act delegates broad implementing discretion to the Secretary of the Interior, and neither the Act nor the underlying international conventions limit the taking of …

Avian Jurisprudence And The Protection Of Migratory Birds In North America, Marshall A. Bowen

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

No Farms No Food? A Response To Baylen Linnekin, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

You have likely seen the bumper sticker, bold white text on a green background, reading “No Farms No Food.” The sticker is a product of, and in fact a tagline for, the American Farmland Trust. On the one hand, the point is obvious: As American Farmland Trust puts it, “[e]very meal on our plates [c]ontains ingredients grown on a farm. We all need farms to survive.” On the other hand, what seems like a plain statement on its face, “no farms no food,” is not so simple. Farms produce affordable food, they produce vast quantities of food, they produce healthy …

Protecting Florida's Marine Life With Conservation Drones, Daniel Grammes

St. Thomas Law Review

This comment analyzes drones under current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and focuses on the issues contributing to unsustainable fisheries in Florida. Part II explains the basic concept of drones and discusses privacy issues through the Fourth Amendment as well as Florida marine patrol statutes that are relevant to an analysis of drone technology. Part III highlights that Florida's fisheries are at an unsustainable level because there are not enough Florida marine patrol officers and the simplicity of disposing illegally harvested wildlife into the ocean. Part IV suggests that Florida adopt legislation authorizing a drone enforcement program for marine patrol. Part V …

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

Articles

No abstract provided.

Payments For Ecosystem Services: Past, Present And Future, James Salzman, Genevieve Bennett, Nathaniel Carroll, Allie Goldstein, Michael Jenkins

Texas A&M Law Review

While we don’t tend to think about it, healthy ecosystems provide a variety of critical benefits. Ecosystem goods, the physical items an ecosystem provides, are obvious. Forests provide timber; coastal marshes provide shellfish. While less visible and generally taken for granted, the services underpinning these goods are equally important. Created by the interactions of living organisms with their environment, ecosystem services provide the conditions and processes that sustain human life.1 If you doubt this, consider how to grow an apple without pollination, pest control, or soil fertility. Once one realizes the importance of ecosystem services, three points quickly emerge: (1) …

Protecting The Public Benefit: Crafting Precedent For Citizen Enforcement Of Conservation Easements, Sean P. Ociepka

Maine Law Review

In fiscal year 2004, Wal-Mart added 139 new discount stores, supercenters, and “neighborhood markets” to its already significant chain of stores across the United States. Wal-Mart developers submit their proposals to governing town bodies all over the country with the promise that the $20 million construction of a 200,000 square foot store will create 500 new jobs for the local economy, will have a payroll of over $12 million, will increase the tax base of the area, and will provide convenient, affordable shopping for consumers. For these reasons, the big box stores are a hard offer for town planners to …

Save Our Cabinets V. U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Jaclyn Van Natta

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Will Regulations Prevent Litigation? An Analysis Of The U.S. Treasury Departments 2017 Revenue Proposals Concerning Conservation Easment Deductions, Garrett Pratt

The Business, Entrepreneurship & Tax Law Review

This article examines the Treasury’s 2017 proposals refining Section 170(h). This article assesses the likely effects of the Treasury’s proposals by discussing their impact in four key ways: (1) the new requirements placed on “qualified organizations” who receive conservation easement contributions; (2) donors’ increased substantiation requirements; (3) the exclusion of golf courses from Section 170(h) eligibility; and (4) the pilot conservation easement tax credit program. For each of these, this article will: examine the category’s current Section 170(h) regulatory treatment, if any, outline what the new proposals require, and then walk through the likely effects of these proposals. This article …

Conserving Parks, Transforming Lives: How The Student Conservation Association Is Shaping The Next 100 Years Of National Parks And The Next Generation Of American Youth, Liz Putnam

Akron Law Review

The National Park Service greeted a record-shattering 307.2 million visitors in 2015. Ironically, however, national parks are becoming irrelevant to large segments of our society. The typical national park visitor is approaching retirement age. Nearly four in five visitors are White, despite the fact that Whites currently make up less than 63% of the US population and are on pace to be in the minority by 2044. Throw in the nature-deficit disorder epidemic among today’s youth and the ongoing shift in our population to urban areas, and the trends do not bode well for the future of our parks.

The …

Alaska: Extraordinary Parks, Extraordinarily Complicated, Julie Lurman Joly

Akron Law Review

In many ways, national parks in Alaska face the same difficulties as other parks nationwide: pockets of strong anti-federal sentiment, increasingly high usage rates (at least in a couple of Alaska parks) leading to resource degradation, decreasing funding, and increasing maintenance costs. On the other hand, Alaska parks are completely unique in their circumstances. Many parks in Alaska receive few to no visitors each year, and Alaska parks contain vast tracts of land and resources but are managed by the barest minimum number of employees. Furthermore, Alaska’s national parks operate in a more complex legal environment than most other national …

The National Park System And Nepa: Non-Impairment In An Age Of Disruption, Jamison E. Colburn

Akron Law Review

We live in an age of disruption. “Disruptive innovations,” typically digital in nature, create new markets and value chains that grow and overthrow market leaders and other incumbents. The founders of our National Park System and National Park Service (NPS) had little sense of such disruption and, judging by how our park ideals have fared in recent decades, too little sense of how disruption works in nature, either. The parks embody a set of ideals and, as one of the most noted inventions of America’s democracy, sit in uneasy tension with the constant disruption of nature’s composition and function. The …

The National Park Service At 100, Donald J. Hellmann

Akron Law Review

In its first century, the National Park Service was transformed from an agency that managed a small number of western parks to one responsible for over 400 sites across the country. The management of these park sites has changed as well, with many new parks structured as a partnership effort between the National Park Service and surrounding cities and towns, as well as non-profit organizations and friends groups. The Park Service has had its work extended by Congress to reach beyond park boundaries in order to help states and local governments with resource preservation and the development of recreational opportunities …

An Introduction To The National Park Service Symposium, Sarah J. Morath

Akron Law Review

This symposium features four different perspectives on the National Park Service Centennial, and includes the voice of Donald J. Hellman, an attorney who has spent much of his career working for the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., Jamison E. Colburn, an environmental law and policy scholar at Penn State Law School and former EPA attorney, Julie Joly Lurman, a natural resources law and public lands expert, and Liz Putnam, a youth and conservation advocate.

Public Conservation Policies On Private Land: A Case Study Of The Brazilian Forest Code And Implications For The Agro-Industry Sector, Rayane Aguiar, Jody M. Endres, Caroline Taylor, Samuel Evans

Pace Environmental Law Review

The objectives of this paper are to discuss (1) a brief history of the Brazilian Forest Code (FC); (2) key aspects of the 2012 FC revisions; (3) the status of implementation, including institutional and field-level challenges, as well as economic incentives to ease compliance; and (4) the importance of the FC for the Brazilian agro-industrial sector.

The Baseline Bar, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Trust Me, I'M A Pragmatist: A Partially Pragmatic Critique Of Pragmatic Activism, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Pragmatism is a robust philosophy, vernacular hand waiving, a method of judicial and administrative decisionmaking, and, more recently, justification for a certain type of political activism. While philosophical, judicial, and administrative pragmatism have garnered substantial attention and analysis from scholars, we have been much stingier with pragmatic activism — that which, in the spirit of the 21st Century’s 140-character limit, I will call “pragtivism.” This Article is intended as an introduction to pragtivism, a critique of the practice, and a constructive framework for addressing some of my critiques.

To highlight the contours of pragtivism, this Article tells the story of …