RES Participates at the White House Roundtable on Conservation Investment

On March 7, 2016, Resource Environmental Solutions (RES) was invited to participate in the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s White House Roundtable on Conservation Investment, highlighting actions by the private sector and the Administration to support ecological restoration, water quality, wetland and habitat protection, and sustainable forest management.

The roundtable was enabled by the November 2015 Presidential Memo encouraging mitigation predictability and enabling natural resource conservation investments through streamlined permitting processes at U.S. regulatory agencies, including application of consistent mitigation approaches and a focus on performance, accountability, and success-based outcomes.

RES’ participation at this forum was enabled by growing from its roots in Louisiana in 2007 to become the nation’s leader in delivery of ecological offsets for unavoidable, project-related impacts to wetlands, streams and habitats.

George Kelly, RES Chief Markets Officer and a pioneer in the mitigation space noted, “One of the key elements to our success is having clear standards for mitigation. These standards help both those providing the mitigation and the developers that are obligated to mitigate. We are pleased that multiple federal agencies will be implementing similar programs under more uniform guidelines, addressing risk for project developers that might otherwise hold up their economic development investments. Professional suppliers like RES provide mitigation solutions that transfer liability for ecological success from project developers to those focused on performance based solutions.”

Elliott Bouillion, RES president and CEO commented, “The entire RES team is committed to providing landscape-level conservation that supports a balance of economic development and responsible environmental stewardship of America’s lands. Over the next three years, RES intends to invest over $350 million in environmental offsets and supporting operations. These investments relate to expenditures on land, construction, and vegetative restoration throughout RES’ offices in the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Gulf Coast and Appalachian Regions, in addition to a number of new project locations. RES will also expand its current ownership of restorative vegetation nurseries, build on its existing work mitigating negative impacts to threatened and endangered species, and expand nutrient trading to 17 states across the country.”