Philomath: Resident wildlife biologist contributes to Obama's new mitigation policy

When President Obama sought a better way to measure and value the impact of development on the nation’s natural resources, he found it in the work of Philomath wildlife biologist Thomas O’Neill.

An area resident for 26 years, O’Neill is founder of Northwest Habitat Institute (NHI), a nonprofit organization committed to conserving native habitats. O’Neill has been a certified wildlife biologist with The Wildlife Society for more than 30 years.

With headquarters in Corvallis, NHI has an 18-year history of habitat evaluation efforts in Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and New Mexico. What makes NHI unique is its patented scientific accounting system, which appraises habitats and ecosystems for developers and conservationists. It is called CHAP, or Combined Habitat Assessment Protocols.

Developing metrics that can place a value on nature has been O’Neill’s focus for the past 25 years, and has been a meticulous process of compiling data, designing methodology, coding algorithms, and going through scientific peer reviews. CHAP’s patent is the first and only one in the United States for a system of assessing habitat value. 

In a memo last November, titled “Mitigating Impacts on Natural Resources from Development and Encouraging Related Private Investment,” President Obama wrote, “American ingenuity has provided the tools that we need to avoid damage to the most special places in our nation and to find new ways to restore areas that have been degraded.”

Obama ordered a one-year deadline for various agencies to create consistent federal policies to mitigate harmful impacts to natural resources. These agencies included the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Policy changes on mitigating impacts under Obama’s directive will require developers to remain conscious about replacing ecosystems that are destroyed for human use. The memo calls for “net benefit,” which means for every mitigation effort there must be an “uplift” in ecological value on another site to keep the ratio of land-sharing balanced.

“This memorandum will encourage private investment in restoration and public-private partnerships, and help foster opportunities for businesses or nonprofit organizations with relevant expertise to successfully achieve restoration and conservation objectives,” the President wrote.

The nonprofit organizations with relevant expertise to which Obama referred includes NHI.

CHAP works similar to an appraisal done on a home; the structure, contents and property are all assessed to give it a value. In CHAP’s case, however, the appraisal includes all plants, species, and species’ functions that comprise an area’s ecosystem. CHAP considers all possible species in a specific area, based on O’Neill’s decades of research, and makes a list of up to 100 functions each species contributes to the ecosystem as a whole. 

The methods are transparent and aim to eliminate subjectivity in what people “think” the property is worth, according to O’Neill. Instead, CHAP provides a metric of the ecological integrity of the site and a set of protocols to get a baseline condition.

“You have to look at the resource through the eyes and lives of wildlife,” O’Neill said. “Coming from only our perspective, there is too much subjectivity in the value.”

NHI’s efforts restoring, or “uplifting,” habitat sites using CHAP includes work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and a $1 billion restoration project for the Los Angeles River — the biggest homeland budget ever used for an ecological restoration project. 

Such projects have increased CHAP’s visibility, and O’Neill’s work has reached top government decision-makers, including President Obama and his staff. 

It took eight years to get CHAP scheduled for review by the Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for developing and maintaining the nation's water and related environmental resources. Last November O’Neill sat down with Corps staffers. 

“I don’t know what was the driver for Obama to [send out the memo],” O’Neill said. “But, our kick-off meeting with the Corps was on Nov. 2 and the memo came out on Nov. 3.”

Just last month, CHAP was selected to be in the official process, following the National Academy of Sciences review standards. It is currently undergoing its final scientific review.

O’Neill has had several webinars with the Corps since the start of the review and expects the process to take about six months, just in time for Obama’s one-year review deadline, which also falls on Nov. 3.