Applied Ecological Services, Inc.
Wisconsin Office
17921 Smith Road,
P. O. Box 256
Brodhead, WI 53520
Phone: 608.897.8641
Voicemail: 608.897.4898
AES Fax: 608.897.8486
TCRN Fax: 608.897.2044
Info@AppliedEco.com

Illinois Office
120 West Main St
W. Dundee, IL 60118
Phone: 847.844.9385
Fax: 847.844.8759

Kansas City Office
1904 Elm Street
Eudora, KS 66025
Phone 785.542.3090
Fax 785.542.3570

Minnesota Office
21938 Mushtown Rd
Prior Lake, MN 55372
Phone: 952.447.1919
Fax: 952.447.1920

East Coast Office
1100 E. Hector Street Suite #398
Conshohocken, PA 19428
Phone: 610.238.9088

Ten Years of Wetland Mitigation Banking
More than just a regulatory tool: The ecologist perspective

Every now and then, we run into someone who claims that mitigation banking is destroying our wetlands...that it's "a lousy alternative"...or that we restoration ecologists are simply acting as "the developers' pawns" (ouch!).

To be sure, wetland mitigation is a complex issue, and one that can easily be misunderstood. We've found that this misunderstanding is usually a product of the past, when many developers performed on-site mitigations with less than environmentally favorable results -- they simply scooped out a shallow depression, filled it with water, and called it a wetland. These generally filled in with reed canary grass and cattails, providing little wildlife habitat and few wetland functions.

AES and LAWR's most recent
project was to permit and build
this wetland mitigation bank in
Boulder, Colorado.

Mitigation banking in itself does not affect the decision by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of whether or not a wetland impact will be allowed to occur. Once the Corps determines that the applicant (typically a developer or farmer) cannot avoid an impact, the agency simply states, "Here are your options; choose one and come back to us with a proposal as to how you are going to compensate for this wetland impact."

Mitigation banking is a tool available to regulatory agencies once the impact decision has been made. In the past decade, the practical effect of wetland banking is that it has created high quality, functional wetlands as replacement for impacts on typically low-quality wetlands.

Another tool available is the "in-lieu fee" program whereby the Corps requires a developer to simply write a check to a non-profit organization as compensation for permitted impacts.

One problem with the in-lieu fee arrangement, however, is that the revenue paid "in lieu" of mitigation is not always spent on creating or restoring wetlands. Therefore, the strict standard of "no net loss" of wetlands required by the Clean Water Act can be compromised when in-lieu fees are not spent on replacing lost wetlands. Mitigation banking, on the other hand, guarantees that wetland functions are replaced and quality wildlife habitat is provided.

In the early '90s, AES first became interested in wetland mitigation banking because it provided an opportunity to create larger scale restorations as well as land stewardship and protection, while avoiding the problems of on-site mitigation such as inappropriate adjacent land usage (i.e., attempting to recreate a wetland next to a shopping mall parking lot). The lion's share of wetlands we see have been highly modified by adjacent land uses, for perhaps hundreds of years since settlement. Agricultural land usage has drained the uplands into the wetlands, and soils from the tilled uplands have eroded into the wetlands. We are dealing with hydrologically and biologically modified settings; so wetland banking allows us to find the right parcels for restoring wetlands of higher biological value.

From an ecological perspective, AES is using mitigation banking as a conservation tool, not just a regulatory tool. We are taking quality pieces of property, restoring them, and leveraging greater conservation value by using them for educational purposes. In many locations, we are also extending, enlarging, or connecting ecologically important lands. By plugging one of these wetland bank "modules" into a fragmented landscape, we are able to connect disparate fragments to provide ecological, hydrological and wildlife continuity, public paths of recreational continuity, and so forth.

To date, the AES team has restored wetlands on 18 mitigation bank projects, partnering with Land and Water Resources (LAWR) of Rosemont, IL, on all but two. Some of the most notable include Otter Creek, the first private wetland mitigation bank in the country; the Vulcan Materials/ Book Property Wetland Mitigation Bank adjacent to the Midewin National Tallgrass Preserve; and the Metra Antioch Wetland Mitigation Bank, the first agency-owned, single-use wetland bank in Illinois.

Looking ahead, AES anticipates becoming involved in mitigation banking projects in North Carolina, Missouri, southern Illinois, and elsewhere. As we move forward, we hope that open communication regarding the issue of wetland mitigation banking will lead to increased knowledge, understanding and support of this important conservation tool. And we will continue to search out new locations in which to put it to good ecological use.

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