This Policy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) concerns mitigating of the adverse impacts of land and water developments on fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats. It also concerns effects of climate change. The primary intent of the Policy is to apply mitigation in a strategic manner that ensures an effective linkage with conservation strategies at appropriate landscape scales (moving away from project-by-project or single-resource mitigation approaches). The Policy serves as overarching Service guidance applicable to all actions for which the Service has specific authority to recommend or require the mitigation of impacts to fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats. It is a framework that implements the U.S. President’s directions for the Service and under which the Service may issue more detailed policies or guidance documents covering specific activities in the future. Under the memorandum, all Federal mitigation policies shall clearly set a net benefit goal or, at minimum, a no net-loss goal for natural resources, wherever doing so is allowed by existing statutory authority and is consistent with agency mission and established natural resource objectives. In most cases, applications of this Policy are advisory. Service recommendations provided under the guidance of this Policy are intended to help action proponents incorporate appropriate means and measures into their actions that will most effectively conserve resources affected by those actions. The guidance of this Policy: Provides a framework for formulating measures to maintain or improve the status of affected species through an application of the mitigation hierarchy informed by a valuation of their affected habitats; will help align Service recommended mitigation with conservation objectives for affected resources and the strategies for achieving those objectives at ecologically relevant scales; will allow action agencies and proponents to anticipate Service recommendations and plan for mitigation measures early, thus avoiding delays and assuring equal consideration of fish and wildlife conservation with other action purposes; and allows for variations appropriate to action- and resource-specific circumstances. The Policy sets out general policy and principles and a Service Mitigation Framework. The Framework provides with respect to: Integrating Mitigation Planning with Conservation Planning (utilizing landscape-scale approaches and landscape conservation planning to inform mitigation, including identifying areas for mitigation that are most important for avoiding and minimizing impacts, improving habitat suitability, and compensating for unavoidable impacts to species); collaboration and coordination with State, Federal, and tribal conservation partners; assessment of the effects of proposed actions and proposed mitigation measures ; Identification by the Service of the species evaluated for mitigation purposes (description of characteristics of evaluation species that are useful in planning mitigation); assessment by the Service of the value of affected habitats to evaluation species based on their scarcity, suitability, and importance to achieving conservation objectives; means and measures that the Service recommends for achieving the mitigation policy goal are action- and resource-specific applications of the three general types of impact mitigation (avoid, minimize, and compensate); general standards for Service recommendations; documentation (early planning, effects assessment, and final recommendations); follow-up (effective monitoring, and when necessary, corrective action).
الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية · 2016-11-09