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Dear Colleagues,
I am sending with this email a link to an article I recently wrote addressing how conservation easements (a very popular legal mechanism used in the United States for protection of private land) might deal with climate change and invasive species. The abstract below sets out the main issues that are covered in the article, entitled, “The Butterfly Effect: Conservation Easements, Climate Change, and Invasive Species.”
While this article does not pretend to have all the answers, or any answers for that matter, it serves to highlight the urgency with which the United States land trust community must collaborate with scientists and environmental philosophers to begin to develop multi-institutional scale policy decisions regarding how to address newly emergent species in conservation easement preserves.
The article can be downloaded for free at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1616364.
Abstract:
This Article explains that one of the consequences of climate change will be migrations of species from their native habitats to newer habitats, typically to the north, with climates similar to those in which such species evolved. These in-migrating species will in many cases be invasive, forcing the native species to out-migrate or be driven to extinction, thereby causing biodiversity loss. As many of these disrupted ecosystems may be protected by perpetual conservation easements, the Article discusses the negative legal consequences of incursions by non-native species on these existing conservation easements. Accordingly, the Article suggests a number of changes that can be made to future conservation easements to help insure their protection of land in perpetuity and to better protect species and their habitats from the effects of climate change-caused migrations.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Best regards,
James L. Olmsted
James L. Olmsted, Esq.
Conservation & Preservation Counsel, L.L.C.
Adjunct Faculty Univ. of Oregon Law School
214 Trailside Loop
Eugene, OR 97405
Tel.: 541.554.3665
Fax: 541.345.8298
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Download my research on my SSRN Author page:
http://ssrn.com/author=1488037
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