Recent Efforts to Streamline Restoration Permitting: Why it matters
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Recent Efforts to Streamline Restoration Permitting: Why it matters

Ecological restoration projects are often as difficult, if not more so, to permit than development. There are multiple regulatory agencies, exorbitant costs, and often years of time needed to secure proper permits. Obviously, this is a barrier for restoration work. Smaller firms and local efforts often do not have the money, time, or technical expertise to navigate this difficult process and will either abandon or avoid projects because of permitting red tape. Our ecological crises are on tight timelines; we don’t have years to wait around for complicated layers of permits. When speaking about our response to climate crises, Wade Crowfoot, California’s Secretary of Natural Resources succinctly put it, "Winning slowly is still losing. We’re still losing if we’re winning in tiny bites. We need to be doing much bigger things faster. That’s how urgent the situation is."

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Opinion: Combating environmental crises requires investment from the private sector
restoration Environmental Policy Innovation Center restoration Environmental Policy Innovation Center

Opinion: Combating environmental crises requires investment from the private sector

Philanthropic and government dollars are perceived as ‘doing good’ for the environment, where private funding, with the same outcome, has a more sinister connotation. Many traditional conservationists think that it is immoral to profit from ecological restoration and conservation. I argue that that is not the case, that private involvement is necessary to combat the climate, clean water, and endangered species crises we find ourselves in. Development will continue to advance; we should embrace the range of solutions available to deliver environmental benefit along with it.

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