Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Habitat Program, 600 Capitol Way, North Olympia, WA 98501, USA.
Environ Manage. 2009 Dec;44(6):1089-98. doi: 10.1007/s00267-009-9399-0. Epub 2009 Nov 10.
Habitat conservation plans (HCPs) are enabled under section 10(a) of the Endangered Species Act. The substantial increase since 1994 in the number of HCPs has motivated numerous critiques of nearly every aspect of HCPs. These critiques have overlooked several paradoxes that expose fundamental shortcomings of section 10(a) or its implementation. I refer to them as: the Trainwreck Paradox, the Jeopardy Paradox, and the Maximum Mitigation Paradox. The Trainwreck Paradox states that HCPs are needed to avert the listing of species as threatened or endangered, but federal listings are needed to motivate landowners to develop HCPs. The Jeopardy Paradox stems from the vague language of section 10(a) which allows an HCP to reduce the likelihood of a species' survival and recovery but establishes no objective limit on the magnitude of reduction. The Maximum Mitigation Paradox argues that if a landowner provides maximum mitigation at the onset of an HCP, then there will be no financial resources for adaptive management in the future, but if resources are reserved for adaptive management, then the landowner is not mitigating to the maximum extent practicable as required by section 10(a). The purpose of this article is to explain these paradoxes of HCPs and discuss potential remedies.
栖息地保护计划（HCPs）是根据《濒危物种法》第 10(a) 条设立的。自 1994 年以来，HCP 的数量大幅增加，这引发了对 HCP 几乎各个方面的无数批评。这些批评忽略了几个悖论，这些悖论暴露了第 10(a) 条或其实施的根本缺陷。我将它们称为：“火车失事悖论”、“危险悖论”和“最大缓解悖论”。“火车失事悖论”指出，需要 HCP 来避免将物种列为受威胁或濒危物种，但需要联邦清单来促使土地所有者制定 HCP。“危险悖论”源于第 10(a) 条的模糊语言，该语言允许 HCP 降低物种生存和恢复的可能性，但对减少的幅度没有设定客观限制。“最大缓解悖论”认为，如果土地所有者在 HCP 开始时提供最大缓解，那么将来就没有用于适应性管理的财务资源，但如果为适应性管理保留资源，那么土地所有者就没有按照第 10(a) 条的要求最大限度地缓解。本文的目的是解释这些 HCP 的悖论，并讨论潜在的补救措施。
