HB 651 Summary

• Authorizes the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) to establish and operate conservation banks that restore, create, enhance, or protect populations of threatened, endangered, candidate, and proposed species and their habitats.

• Allows conservation bank sponsors (public or private entities) to generate tradeable credits representing increases in species populations or ecological functions, which incidental take licensees can purchase to satisfy compensatory mitigation requirements under habitat conservation plans.

• Requires conservation bank applications to include resource management plans with goals, performance standards, monitoring requirements, maintenance plans, long-term management plans, and adaptive management strategies, subject to board approval requiring a two-thirds vote and endangered species recovery committee recommendation.

• Prohibits credit stacking but permits credit bundling as a single commodity; restricts transferability so credits are retired after use and conservation bank instruments run with the land and cannot be transferred separately.

• Amends the Endangered Species Recovery Committee's membership and responsibilities to include review and recommendation authority over conservation bank applications and requires DLNR to adopt implementing rules.