The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today released a draft handbook that, when finalized, will guide implementation of the Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances (CCAA) permit program. The program is designed to encourage landowners to manage their land to benefit declining species that may require the protection of the Endangered Species Act.
The CCAA Policy, approved in 1999, promotes the conservation of proposed and candidate species, and species likely to become candidates for listing under the Endangered Species Act, by giving non-Federal property owners incentives to implement conservation measures. In the past, some landowners managed their property to prevent or discourage the presence of candidate species, believing that if the species later became listed as a threatened or endangered species land-use restrictions would follow. The CCAA permit program eliminates this potential disincentive by providing landowners with regulatory certainty that listing of the species will not impose any additional restrictions beyond the conservation measures they agree to take as a condition of the permit.
