We are passionate about the stewardship and protection of aquatic areas in Washington State. Wetlands, streams, and other aquatic habitat are the cardiovascular system of a watershed and many plants and animals that are rare, threatened, endangered or in decline rely on these habitats to complete their life cycles.
Our quality of life and the health of our local economies also depend on healthy watersheds. Effective and sustainable compensatory mitigation projects are one of the tools that can help reverse the negative impacts and loss of our aquatic areas over time. Because of this, we are passionate about improving the mitigation options in a watershed and building in a net gain of habitat area and ecological function when our bank projects are utilized. The historical loss of wetlands and streams within our watersheds makes it more imperative that we develop meaningful, highly functioning compensatory mitigation projects that can last and function forever in perpetuity.
Habitat bank can develop large scale mitigation projects, also known as consolidated mitigation projects. As and example, Habitat Bank developed a large, consolidated wetland mitigation project in partnership with the City of Battle Ground for unavoidable wetland impacts within the City of Battle Ground and within portions of the Salmon and Mill Creek drainage basins.
Habitat Bank is uniquely skilled at pulling together and working with the many different stakeholders that regulate or provide expertise on a mitigation bank project, in order to meet our region’s restoration objectives and create valuable mitigation resources for permit applicants. Habitat Bank has partnered with conservation districts, cities, ports, tribes, farmers, private developers and state agencies to evaluate mitigation banking projects, in-lieu fee programs, advanced consolidated mitigation solutions and other mitigation options throughout the Northwest.
By leveraging our knowledge of mitigation demand, state and federal banking rules, current regional issues and permitting approach, we are uniquely able to evaluate the feasibility of a mitigation bank project from both an ecological and economic perspective. Currently we are working to integrate wetland, salmon and stream mitigation credits into existing and proposed mitigation projects, in order to more fully address complicated permitting requirements and/or impacts to multiple types of habitats or aquatic areas. As markets for additional ecosystem services develop, we will work to incorporate those elements into our offerings to maximize the return and applicability credits from current and future projects.