Since most such species occur in whole or in part on private land, meeting that challenge will require the cooperation of private landowners — farmers, ranchers, forest landowners and others. Their cooperation can’t be mandated, but with the right policies and attitudes, it can be earned.

Encouraging landowners to be partners in species protection

For a number of years, Environmental Defense has been experimenting with new ways to earn the cooperation of landowners and to make rare species more secure. Those efforts have given us a better appreciation of the power of incentives to reward and encourage landowners to manage habitat to benefit rare species.

In early 2004, through our Center for Conservation Incentives, we launched the “Back from the Brink” campaign. The goal of this campaign is to make a simple, yet powerful point: Endangered species are not lost causes. (Read more about or species recovery work.)

The right policies, the right incentives and a practical approach can arrest the decline of these and many other at-risk species and improve their future prospects.

For some species, complete recovery and removal from the endangered species list may not be achieved in the foreseeable future, but making demonstrable progress and setting them securely on the road to recovery is a realistic goal.