Eastern St. Lawrence watershed again offers mitigation credits

BRASHER, New York – Aug. 7, 2019 – Ducks Unlimited has re-established wetland mitigation credit availability in the Eastern St. Lawrence Watershed through approval of a wetland mitigation project at a 72.23-acre site in the St. Lawrence region in Upstate New York.

The site, when constructed this fall, will provide 17.12 wetland mitigation credits and allow Ducks Unlimited to continue selling credits in the Eastern St. Lawrence Watershed.

In Lieu Fee (ILF) is a mitigation approach that allows small impacts from many projects with unavoidable wetland impacts to be consolidated at larger, more sustainable project sites. A key feature of ILF is legal obligations tied to mitigation requirements are transferred to Ducks Unlimited through a simple credit-purchase process. This mitigation approach allows Ducks Unlimited to focus on its mission and vision of protecting and restoring important wetland habitats, while providing an economical service for industry.

This site is the third construction project in Ducks Unlimited’s ILF program in New York and Vermont. Ducks Unlimited has more than a dozen ILF projects under way or in the permitting phase in these two states.

The St. Lawrence River watershed is one of most prominent hydrological features in New York. The region supports a thriving tourism industry, commercial trade and sport fishing. The water quality of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes is intricately connected to the health of its wetlands, which filter pollutants from rainwater runoff before entering waterways.

Regulatory structuring of the ILF program ensures a net increase in wetlands over time on the landscape from Ducks Unlimited’s ILF program. These larger ILF projects offer more benefits to water quality and wildlife habitat than smaller, more isolated projects.

Ducks Unlimited’s ILF mitigation program in the northeast has numerous accomplishments to date, including:

• Two projects constructed in 2018, one in New York, one in Vermont, which influenced 105 acres through restoration or active management and produced 38 wetland credits.
• To date, Ducks Unlimited has protected ten properties for the ILF program totaling 1,655 acres. Two pending acquisitions will bring the protected acres total up to 1,828 acres.
• Ducks Unlimited’s first 10 in-lieu fee projects will produce approximately 230 mitigation credits.

Visit www.ducks.org/mitigation to learn more about all of Ducks Unlimited’s mitigation opportunities. Click here to visit the New York program and click here to visit the Vermont program.

Ducks Unlimited Inc. is the world's largest nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving North America's continually disappearing waterfowl habitats. Established in 1937, Ducks Unlimited has conserved more than 14.5 million acres thanks to contributions from more than a million supporters across the continent. Guided by science and dedicated to program efficiency, DU works toward the vision of wetlands sufficient to fill the skies with waterfowl today, tomorrow and forever. For more information on our work, visit www.ducks.org.