Sharks 

Ocean giants such as the great white shark live on a frontier of conservation.

Like snakes, wolves, and grizzly bears, they are dangerous and yet also part of the nature we love.  For both reasons they cannot be ignored.  Like all wildlife they play a role in their ecosystems that we could lose by mistakes of science or an overreaction of caution.

Until recently, there were few ways to study sharks as closely as we do other species.  OCEARCH made the science possible by launching a special ship, the MV OCEAN, equipped to catch and release the largest of great white sharks.  While captured sharks are on the platform of ship, scientists can measure and test them and attach a beacon for tracking their movements after release.

OCEARCH is using fascination with sharks as the opportunity to teach conservation.  As it tracks them using electronics and computer mapping, OCEARCH is learning the same basic biology we have studied in other animals for decades.  The techniques of catching, releasing, and tracking sharks are adding subjects to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) school lesson plans. What we learn of the great whites’ ocean habitat is an opportunity for greater stewardship of the oceans.

Watershed Results supports OCEARCH, the leading organization in shark conservation. With a boat large enough and designed to catch and release sharks for science, OCEARCH has created a mobile laboratory where scientists and students can study and learn.

Conservation Leadership 

Wherever leaders come from, we need to get them, help them, and replace them when they retire.

The directors, CEOs, and senior staff conservation agencies and groups often come from the ranks of professional conservation.  They arrive in leadership after spending their early careers focused on technical ecology, forestry, and other disciplines.  They learn the business end usually by trial-and-error and, hopefully, from good mentors.  Wisdom gained by experience can be lost to turnover when they retire.

The conservation movement is no longer leaving to chance the development of its leaders.  Training academies such as the National Conservation Training Center are teaching the basics of budgeting, staff management, administration, and negotiation.  Advanced programs such as the National Conservation Leadership Institute, and the Boone and Crockett Club University Programs are teaching on the wider set of challenges in this public-service profession.

Leaders in conservation have a workforce and a “customer base” – which, ultimately, is everyone in the country – who all bring some level of passion to their roles.  They all are focused on something they own together.  The everyday business of doing what people expect and delivering a satisfactory product can be quite complicated.  There also are many ways of doing the job, some of which, like surgery and medication, can be frightening or risky and hard to explain.

Watershed Results supports professional training in leadership and active involvement of people in steering the course of conservation. The National Conservation Leadership Institute, Boone and Crockett Club University Programs and the Conservation Roundtable are among the leading programs.  All are advancing the sensitivity, intuition, technical skill, and deliberations needed so that we all can get along as we work with each other to get what we want.

Conservation Innovations 

Traditional conservation in America mainly is the work of government and charity – but there is more going on.

Taxes and donations support conservation agencies and legions of non-profit charitable organizations such as those of the American Wildlife Conservation Partnership and many others.  The other source of money for conservation is from the private sector, which is activating the power of markets to achieve still more conservation results.

For example, landowners can sell access to prime hunting grounds, investors can earn money by restoring and maintaining wetlands or species habitat, and businesses can make a profit running state parks.  These innovations depend on the same contracts and private investment as in commerce.  For conservation, clever innovation has adapted private transactions to benefit public resources like wildlife and water that belong to everyone.  Landowners can charge fees for access to their property, which works best for them if they have improved the wildlife there – to the benefit to all.  An investor in wetlands and habitat restoration can be repaid for their work by others who convert a smaller wetland or habitat into something else (a farm field, a parking lot).  Parks are a service of government, and they are expensive to maintain, improve, and manage.  By hiring expert contractors, government can deliver popular and excellent parks that make enough money to keep them open.

Watershed Results is a proud partner with innovators of these approaches.  PERC and the Sand County Foundation both have been developing the contracts, supporting policy, and practice of market innovations for decades. Texan By Nature is helping businesses bring conservation into the lives of their employees and onto their lands. With the added power of markets, more conservation is being done and more people are getting involved.

Sportsmen Conservation 

Hunting has driven the conservation movement for more than 100 years.  In the days before conservation laws, hunters saw the tragedy of public ownership of wildlife leading to its elimination.

Hunters established laws and applied scientific management to stop and reverse the decline. They also committed to an ethical code called Fair Chase that self-imposed the necessary restraint and respect in personal behavior that no law could ever instill or enforce.

The successors of the hunters who founded the conservation movement are still engaged in the same law and science.  With deer, elk, ducks, turkeys, bears, and other species restored, these organizations are now completing the job for sheep and expanding efforts to non-hunted wildlife.  There is now an organization for the stewardship of nearly every game species and habitat and many non-game species.  Together in the American Wildlife Conservation Partnership, many of these groups advocate for the laws, budgets, and programs that steer the modern conservation movement through today’s challenges.  The effort is powered by funds from hunting and fishing license fees, self-imposed taxes on equipment and supplies, and the cost of trips.  Sportsmen dollars circulate to professional agencies, local communities, and landowners that care for and support wildlife populations.

Watershed Results proudly serves and supports B&C, AWCP organizations, and the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation in keeping and advancing the legacy of wildlife conservation policy in hearts of people and the policies of Washington and the state capitols.

Litigation 

Under the detailed volumes of law and regulation guiding conservation there is still room for disputes.

Mistakes, unforeseen details, new situations, and advocates trying to reverse a decision can all lead to court.  There the judges must sort out interpretations of science, soundness of facts, and the limits of professional judgment.  Lawsuits are routine in conservation.

The most common lawsuits claim, basically, that the decision process was not followed as required by the National Environmental Policy Act and Administrative Procedures Act – the “technicality” cases.  Other cases pit the intent of laws written long ago against the realities of situations today – the “substantive” cases.

The politics of lawsuits are heavy on all sides:  public interest against personal choices, access to the courts against selfish monkey-wrenching, and precaution against insightful action.  People and nature both can suffer.  The Equal Access to Justice Act and many “citizen-suit provisions” in law since the mid-1900s have invited citizen lawsuits and reimbursed legal fees so private parties can check government’s power.  This also has allowed special interests to attack government.  Debates are underway on how to protect the public interest from litigation itself.

Watershed Results is not a law firm but works on the issue of litigation because of its effects for good or ill in conservation decision-making. We have worked on the Open Book on Equal Access to Justice Act (enacted in 2019) to collect data on litigation that will help manage their causes and frequency. We work on specific court cases in nearly every assignment either because a past case has interpreted relevant policy or because a pending case could change outcomes.

Wildlife Agencies 

All bureaucracy is notorious for doing necessary work with needless hassles.  It’s true for wildlife agencies:  they are at the core of American conservation success and can also be the culprits in the problems of bureaucracy.

State agencies in particular are in the middle of every fish and wildlife issue.  Federal agencies typically hold limited, but often powerful, authority to coordinate or supersede the states.  These include not only the Fish and Wildlife Service, but the land and water agencies such as the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service.

Big differences separate State and Federal agencies.  State agencies operate on a principle of pay as you go.  The primary users of wildlife – hunters and anglers – pay for conservation through license fees and a long-ago, self-imposed tax on guns and ammunition, and rods and tackle and boat fuel (per the Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson Acts).  These funds stay with state wildlife agencies to fund their programs.  Federal agencies have limited fee programs and mostly operate on the principle of the Federal Land Management Planning Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, which like many other laws require that every Federal plan, permit, or project decision is based on a scientific analysis.

Watershed Results works closely through strong relationships with both state and Federal agencies, governors’ offices, White House level leadership, and the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, and The Wildlife Society (the professional society of wildlife biologists).

Budget and Spending 

“No money… no mission.”  It doesn’t matter what a plan says if there is not enough behind it.

Short budgets – and bloated ones – more frequently hold up progress or waste opportunities than do laws or rules standing in the way.  Budgets also are more often up for renewal than other policy.  They change every year or, in some states, every two years.  Of course, this makes budgeting among the most competitive arenas for getting things done.

Government spending for conservation is currently squeezed in a vise between the two biggest pieces of the Federal budget.  On one side is so-called “entitlement spending” that pays for Social Security, medical programs, and other obligations set by law.  These rise each year according to set rules.  The other side is defense spending.  This amount is decided anew each year but always at a the same scale as entitlements.  These two pieces of the budget spend out all of the tax revenue coming in.  That means conservation and all other amounts are set each year with money the government borrows.

There are good options to hoping for more government spending:  steering existing funds, amending contracting rules, cost-sharing, and creating market structures such as Public Private Partnerships that bring in private investment.  And government is not the only way to move conservation.  People, businesses, and charities play large roles.

Watershed Results has directed funds to research on wildlife diseases, solutions to conflict between wildlife and livestock, smart fixes for Threatened and Endangered Species, and attention to Federal lands.  We develop budgets from the expected costs of intended achievements, not looking back to past budgets as if pledging more means caring more.

Water and Wetlands 

Water is needed nearly everywhere, and there is a lot going on to keep it between too much and not enough.

Droughts and floods are damaging or deadly.  The trickle-down of watersheds through streams, lakes, and groundwater can be diverted, depleted, or dirtied along the way.  Some of this is necessary; some of it is a nuisance, or worse.

The technical issues are in delivering and keeping water where needed at the right level of quality.  The legal issues arise when amount and quality don’t measure up to private water rights or public requirements.  The most difficult issue in water lately is called Waters of the US (WOTUS).  This the problem of identifying how far up a watershed the Federal government can take jurisdiction over water.  There is no clear line in the mixing zone between waterways that float boats (where Federal law rules) and the smallest headwaters (where States rule).

Watershed Results has been involved in WOTUS, Federally-reserved water rights, instream flows, water trading, Bureau of Reclamation irrigation projects, dams such as on the Columbia River and the Klamath Basin, and “guzzlers” – catchments in the desert that replace water for wildlife where natural water has been diverted for human use.

Private Lands 

Private lands are the biggest segment of land in the country. To landowners, each parcel is a home, a family legacy, or an asset for making a living, or all of these.

Intended or not, private lands are an enormous and valuable estate for conservation. Problems arise where stewardship is lacking or property rights are taken or infringed.  The opportunities are in benefits to public wildlife, water, and other values.  There are ways to get the good stuff through clear, voluntary agreements backstopped by protections against waste or harm.

The conservation easement is one of the best-known forms of agreement on private lands. These typically are permanent changes to a land deed that describe conservation commitments.  Term contracts and cost-share projects also are options.  The Natural Resource Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture, and the Partners for Wildlife Program of the Fish and Wildlife Service offer many forms of these agreements.

More recently, private investors have begun to offer entirely privately-funded agreements from which they can earn profits as a wetland mitigation bank or species habitat bank. Landowners benefit in cash, tax deductions, or in the progress of their own conservation missions. The public benefits from effects of commitments to limit or control construction or tillage, or to promote habitat or water quality.

Watershed Results is involved in every form of conservation agreements with landowners. We were closely involved with the National Conservation Easement Database. We represent mitigation bankers, and we work every day with many conservationists who either are landowners themselves or who are face-to-face to the landowners in talks for conservation progress.

Wildlife Law and Regulation 

The rule of law is a definite improvement over chaos, but sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference. The wisdom of the rules can get lost in complications, overreach, or unintended consequences.

Hunting and fishing regulations were the first and still are the primary rules for wildlife.  New rules have been added for non-hunted species and for habitat, air, and water.  As the set grows, it also changes. 

New technology, ideas, and interests call for new hunting and fishing rules:  the gray wolf once could be hunted or trapped without restriction; and, innovation in weapons, night vision, communication, and unmanned aerial vehicles are forcing changes to legal means and methods of pursuing wildlife. 

New policy can help by loosening up restrictions to promote results.  Incentives for negotiated solutions are called for in facing diseases like Chronic Wasting Disease and pneumonia that driven by exposure to captive and domestic animals.  For species in decline, the Endangered Species Act could accomplish more with incentives.  On Public Land, the active care and improvement of habitat can be held up by layers of rules.  Ironically, precluding active management creates more habitat problems.  Some rules – notably of the National Park Service – preclude wildlife management altogether.  The Bureau of Land Management is strictly limited in how it can attempt to control wild horses and burros that are destroying wildlife habitat.

Watershed Results works across the board of wildlife regulation. We have long experience in Endangered Species Act, hunting and fishing regulation, and the management of deer, elk, bighorn sheep, and other big game. We have worked on challenges in fisheries where extensive translocations and introductions of species across the country have created both good fishing and also pitfalls of invasive species and hybridization.