What matters to me today is “recovery.” Comments on the California Department of Fish & Wildlife’s (CDFW) proposed Guidelines for Recovery Planning for protected species are due tomorrow. In fact, many perplexing personal, domestic, and international dynamics would benefit from consideration through a lens of recovery.
CDFW’s proposal is relatively common sense, adheres to the legislative direction in SB 743, appropriately allows deference to federal recovery plans, and, most importantly, states repeatedly that it is NON-REGULATORY. There was no choice there – the statute says “NON-REGULATORY.”
There is a critical distinction between recovery efforts and what many in the regulatory community are used to, i.e., mitigation. Mitigation leaves an impacted species no worse off than you found it before your regulated activity. Recovery, conversely, must have a net positive outcome; it must leave the species better than you found it, moving toward the point at which the species no longer requires legal protection.
From a private property rights perspective, mitigation is a cost of doing business. Recovery, on the other hand, implicates Fifth Amendment compensable takings if involuntarily. When and where compelled mitigation crosses over to compensable recovery can be difficult to define.
But recovery, I humbly suggest, should not be viewed merely as a return to the pre-threat status quo. Whether for imperiled species, domestic economic vitality, global conflict resolution, or even personal well-being, true recovery must eliminate the need for extraordinary intervention, not seeking return to a less-dire past but for thriving in present and anticipated future dynamics.
That’s what matters to me today in 250 words or less. What matters to you? I’d really like to know.
CDFW Proposed Guidelines for Recovery Planning here: https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=232386&inline