Greetings! My name is Nirav, and this summer, I started my DFP fellowship position with the Carlsbad Fish and Wildlife Office, located in Legacy Region 8 of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). I was very fortunate to obtain this specific position with the Carlsbad office because I can stay local in San Diego while I finish the final year of my undergraduate studies at SDSU, and also get to learn more about the local wildlife and natural landscapes that I have around me. During my orientation and introductory meetings, I heard from a diverse group of employees in the USFWS, from the DFP program coordinators to field biologists who have worked with the Service for many years. I was also able to get a tour of the Carlsbad field office and learned what it may be like to work there one day. It was apparent that everyone I met shared a true passion for the conservation mission of the USFWS and for investing in each other and the DFPs to continue on with upholding these values. At week four, I already feel like I am a part of a close knit community and am doing work that I truly feel is important for conservation.
The title of my project is Tracking Compliance with Conservation Banking Agreements. If you are unfamiliar with the topic, like I mostly was at first, a conservation bank is essentially an area of protected land, often part of a refuge system, that possesses substantial ecological value in terms of conserving natural resources such as specific types of habitat, native vegetation, and protected species. If a proposed development project is set to cause environmental damage on a protected species or their habitat, then that developer is required to purchase a certain acreage of a conservation bank, in the form of “conservation credits”, as a way to offset the negative impacts that they are going to have at the construction site. This system allows areas of conserved land to possess a tangible market value, hence, the term “conservation bank”.
As the office’s Conservation Banking Intern, my role is to help ensure that these banks are being properly managed so that the credits of land being sold to mitigate environmental damage from development actually possess the ecological value they are supposed to. To do this, I have been assigned a number of conservation banks existing throughout San Diego County for which I am reviewing what types of land management, maintenance, and monitoring tasks that the bank manager is required to do, and review the annual reports to determine if these necessary actions are being carried out and reported back to the Fish and Wildlife office. Luckily, I am not just going to be on a computer organizing and reviewing these files. Since COVID restrictions have started to be lifted, my supervisor has been able to schedule site visits to the conservation banks that I am working on. This will be an amazing opportunity to learn how the sites are being managed in person, and maybe even see some of the listed species that these banks serve to protect!
Photos and captions:
Below is a picture of some of the files I picked for one of the conservation banks I will be reviewing. Since many of these banks were created and signed into agreement a long time ago, a majority of the documents for them only exist as hard copy files in the field office. My job is to see if these files contain the documents we are looking for including signed banking agreements, long term management plans for the bank, and up to date annual reports. If something is missing, it is my responsibility to reach out to the land manager and politely request that they send the documents that I am looking for. I can then convert these files into electronic copies, using the scanner I was given, for other members of the region 8 offices to access on a shared drive if they ever need to obtain information about a particular bank in the future. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I could take (besides a screenshot from my computer) that is specific to the work I am currently doing. I have not had a chance to take any pictures of the conservation banks yet since my site visits are scheduled to start next week. I will be sure to include those photos in my next blog post!
This is a picture I took while hiking in Mission Trails Regional Park, one of largest publicly accessible open space preserves here in San Diego. I included this photo because I have always had an appreciation for the wildlife and nature in my local area, and am excited that working with the Carlsbad Fish and Wildlife Office will allow me to develop a greater understanding of the different species and habitats that I live around.
The story image is a portrait shot of me on a hike while visiting El Dorado National Forest in Northern California. Hiking is a long-standing hobby of mine and my smile is intended to convey that nature is one of the places where I feel most comfortable and happy. I will get to experience this more while also having a new and informative experience when I get to visit the conservation bank sites later this month.
Agency: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Program: US Fish & Wildlife Service - DFP
Location: Carlsbad Fish and Wildlife Office