What Is Safe Harbor?
Posted: 01-Sep-2002; Updated: 02-Jul-2003
 | |||
 | |||
Safe Harbor agreements are a new means of conserving endangered and threatened species on privately owned land. They overcome the disincentives that inhibit many landowners from implementing practices likely to benefit endangered species, or the perverse incentives that prompt some to try to prevent such species from occupying their property. At present, many landowners fear that if they manage land in ways likely to attract endangered species to their property, or to increase the number or distribution of those already there, they will suffer increased restriction on the future use of their property. As a result, they are unwilling to take such risks. Other landowners actively manage property to prevent endangered species from occupying their land.
Safe Harbor agreements overcome these problems. They assure a landowner who agrees to carry out activities expected to benefit an endangered species that no added Endangered Species Act restrictions will be imposed on the landowner as a result. They effectively "freeze" a landowner's Endangered Species Act responsibilities at their current levels for a particular species if he or she agrees to restore, enhance, or create habitat for that species. They do not, however, confer a right to harm any endangered species already present when the agreement is entered into (the landowner's "baseline" responsibilities). Those responsibilities are unaffected by a safe harbor agreement.
PHOTO: Sightings like this 24-day-old red-cockaded woodpecker peeking out of its nest cavity may become more common in the Southeast, as Safe Harbor programs in the Carolinas and Texas encourage landowners to restore habitat for the endangered bird. The tuft of red feathers on this woodpecker's forehead identifies it as a male.
Overcoming landowner apprehension of incurring Endangered Species Act liabilities could result in a wide range of management practices that would benefit not only endangered species but other environmental objectives. These actions include the use of prescribed burning and other techniques to control hardwood growth in ecosystems that historically were naturally dependent on wild fire disturbance and are now declining because of fire suppression; longer rotation cycles in forest systems where endangered species are associated with older forest communities; active control of invasive, non-native grasses and other organisms that threaten ecological integrity; reestablishment of hedgerows, vegetated field borders, and native vegetation generally in areas now denuded by "clean farming" practices; and reintroduction of imperiled species into formerly occupied areas. Strategies to maximize the benefits of safe harbor agreements could focus on areas buffering parks, refuges, and other protected areas (thereby effectively increasing their size) and connecting habitat patches in fragmented landscapes.
The first Safe Harbor agreement was approved in the spring of 1995 in the Sandhills of North Carolina to benefit the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. By September 2002, 62 landowners had enrolled over 36,000 acres of land. Participating landowners include non-industrial forest landowners, horse farms, golf course resorts, and even residential property owners. Enrolled parcels range in size from 2.5 acres to several thousand acres. The program has been enthusiastically received by local landowners and has won praise in both Audubon magazine and Farm Bureau News (perhaps the only endangered species idea ever to accomplish that). The birds also took notice: in 1999, two colonies of red-cockaded woodpeckers settled on safe harbor lands, and reproduction was documented at one.
In the few years since the Sandhills safe harbor was signed, safe harbor agreements have spread over a wide range of states. A diverse group of landowners is restoring and maintaining habitat for several endangered and threatened species, and in some cases reintroducing species to locations where they have vanished along with their habitat. The US Fish and Wildlife Service issued its official safe harbor policy in June 1999, and for fiscal years 1999-2001, Congress appropriated $5 million for landowner incentives including safe harbor. Two states, Hawaii and Kansas have enacted safe harbor policies. To learn more about safe harbor agreements now in force, click on one of the links below.
