Date: Aug 11, 2015
Event Type: Other Webinar
Time: 12pm Mountain / 11am Pacific

Host: Southern Rockies LCC

Speaker: Ted Toombs, Environmental Defense Fund

Description: Habitat Exchange is a new conservation program being developed by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and its partners in several states. The purpose of the Habitat Exchange is to protect, restore, and conserve habitat value for a variety of species and ecosystems. Its goal is to provide financial and regulatory incentives and stimulate greater involvement of the private landowner community in this conservation.

In many cases, Habitat Exchanges are being used as an innovative way to expand on the conservation banking model for mitigation. They also serve as a means to more accurately quantify the outcomes of conservation practices.

For each Habitat Exchange, EDF and its partners have developed three basic documents/tools to guide the operations and functioning of the program: An operations manual, a legal agreement, and a Habitat Quantification Tool.

This webinar will focus mostly on the Habitat Quantification Tools (HQT) being developed for the greater sage-grouse in Colorado. The purpose of the HQT is to serve as a currency enabling apples to apples comparisons of impacts and offsets in mitigation and quantify outcomes of conservation practices. The greater sage-grouse HQT is habitat function based and includes the following components:

Methods document describing the science and metrics used User’s Guide outlining the Geographic Information Systems steps Calculator used to calculate an impact or offset using measures of habitat function Field Guide describing data collection and sampling methods About the speaker: Ted Toombs is a grassland/shrub-land ecologist by training and has worked directly with farmers, ranchers, agencies, and other conservation partners for over 15 years to design, improve, and implement conservation incentive programs. Ted has been with Environmental Defense Fund for 12 years and he spearheaded the development of Habitat Exchanges, an innovative, market-based conservation tool to conserve the threatened Utah prairie dog. Now, Habitat Exchanges are being considered in 5 states to conserve the greater sage-grouse. Ted's current role in Habitat Exchanges is leading the development of the methods of habitat quantification for Habitat Exchanges in Colorado and Wyoming. Ted is also pursuing a PhD in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University where he is investigating the perception of Illinois farmers toward water quality issues related to Gulf Hypoxia.

How to attend: On the day of the webinar,

Log-in (click or copy and paste into browser): https://mmancusa.webex.com/mmancusa/j.php?MTID=m188b8277580c19da98ff41ed6416aaec Dial: 1-888-834-5486; Access code: 146 452 93