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Free Aerial Imagery as a Resource to Monitor Compliance with the Endangered Species Act

View ORCID ProfileJacob Malcom, Tiffany Kim, Ya-Wei Li
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/204750
Jacob Malcom
1Defenders of Wildlife, 1130 17th Street NW, Washington DC 20036
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Tiffany Kim
2University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
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Ya-Wei Li
3Defenders of Wildlife, 1130 17th Street NW, Washington DC 20036
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Abstract

Compliance monitoring is an integral part of law and policy implementation. A lack of compliance monitoring for the Endangered Species Act (ESA), driven in part by resource limitations, may be undercutting efforts to recover threatened and endangered species. Here we evaluate the utility of freely available satellite and aerial imagery as a cost-efficient component of ESA compliance monitoring. Using data on actions authorized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) under section 7 of the ESA, we show that approximately 40% of actions can be found in remotely sensed imagery. Some types of actions, such as residential and commercial development, roadwork, and forestry, show substantially higher observability. Based on our results and the requirements of compliance monitoring, we recommend FWS standardize data collection requirements for consultations; record and publish terms and conditions of consultations; and encourage their staff to use technology such as remotely sensed data as a central part of their workflow for implementing the ESA.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 17, 2017.
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Free Aerial Imagery as a Resource to Monitor Compliance with the Endangered Species Act
Jacob Malcom, Tiffany Kim, Ya-Wei Li
bioRxiv 204750; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/204750
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Free Aerial Imagery as a Resource to Monitor Compliance with the Endangered Species Act
Jacob Malcom, Tiffany Kim, Ya-Wei Li
bioRxiv 204750; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/204750

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