This book was a long time in the making. Our first conversation about mitigation banking (in fact, our first conversation ever) took place by phone in 2006 when Rebecca was a graduate student at UC Berkeley and Martin was an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina.1 In the thirteen years since, we submitted, resubmitted, resubmitted again, and finally won a grant from the National Science Foundation to fund this work (BCS 1213827), conducted research throughout the United States, wrote multiple articles, gave dozens of talks on environmental markets, switched institutions, and during all of that time were physically in the same room fewer than half a dozen times. Nevertheless, there has been a consistency in idea-sharing that has been unusually productive and delightful, and allowed us to sustain the project over time and space.
Throughout this process, we collaborated with Morgan Robertson, a political ecologist at the University of Wisconsin and one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet on wetland mitigation banking. Though he did not help to write this book, many of the ideas we present here are a product of more than a decade of collaboration and discussion in which he was an integral part.
The social science component of this project was entirely dependent on people’s willingness to talk with us. Our human subjects protocol does not allow us to list you by name, but there is no way we could have done this work without you, and we are immensely grateful. Thank you!
We are also grateful to colleagues both inside and outside academia who helped to frame this project and hone its results. At Indiana University (where Rebecca is now), Ilana Gershon, Tom Gieryn, and Eden Medina listened to and reflected on multiple iterations of this work. At the University of North Carolina and at Duke University, Todd BenDor and Emily Bernhardt were thought partners throughout much of the work. Frank Magilligan and Margaret Palmer have helped us wrangle this sprawling subject into coherence over the years. Although we never formally interviewed them as part of this research, Palmer Hough and Eric Somerville at the EPA provided very useful historical context on the development of mitigation banking, as did Dave Owen. Doug Thompson has been a wealth of information and understanding about the historical roots of restoration in the early twentieth century; we drew heavily on his painstaking and excellent work. David Lansing helped us come to grips with the literature on carbon credits. Most recently, as we were developing the argument in the last section of the conclusion to this book, timely critical feedback from colleagues at the University of Cambridge revealed some important holes in our thinking.
A number of graduate students helped with aspects of this research. Julia Ferguson and David Gordon were part of the initial nationwide survey of stream mitigation banking that helped us pick the states where we focused our work. Curtis Pomilia helped with transcription and Susan Powell tracked down the roots of mitigation in environmental policy. Jai Singh collected much of the geomorphic data in North Carolina and Eric Nost was involved throughout, most particularly with our research in Oregon.
At the MIT Press, Beth Clevenger provided thoughtful feedback and great enthusiasm (and if you’ve ever written a book, you know how precious the latter bit can be), and the manuscript review process has been simply fantastic.
Hooray for my colleagues in the Geography Department at Indiana University for creating such a positive and respectful work environment, and for embracing the unfamiliar in accepting monographs as legit scholarly products. Indiana University, more broadly, has been an unusually supportive institution for me. My community here in Bloomington has been a consistent source of comradery and outrageously good food: Steph, Reynard, Sarah, Tessa, Charles, Sara, Mark, Kylie, Eric, Cristian, Eden, Ilana, David, Maria, and Edgar, among many others. I am so grateful to have landed here given the deep weirdness of the academic job market. I continue to be inspired by my kickass colleagues outside IU. Particular thanks to Julie Guthman, Becky Mansfield, Kendra McSweeney and Wendy Wolford for helping me navigate the gendered absurdities of academic life, and to Phil Mirowski and Sam Randalls, who were there in the early days of this project, helping me to think better, smarter, and more deeply about the political economy of environmental science.
Sam and Nell make everything better with dumb jokes, thoughtful company, and unfailing encouragement to channel Bone Claw Mother rather than Midwestern Nice Girl.
I am profoundly grateful that unlike my previous book, this one was not steeped in untimely losses, though Ruth Gibson Snyder (1917–2016) is still much missed.
Last thing: working with Martin for nearly fifteen years, particularly the process of cowriting this book, has been an entertaining, thought-provoking, and egalitarian collaboration. I will miss working with you, my friend!
I began talking to regulators and mitigation bankers in North Carolina fifteen years ago, and over that time, their patience in educating me, willingness to take repetitive phone calls, and readiness to review all manner of my writing have been tremendous. Most notable are Adam Riggsbee, John Preyer, George Howard, George Kelly, Todd Tugwell, Steve Martin, and Dave Lekson, among many others. Mike Wicker (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service) has played a consistent, behind-the-scenes role in steering mitigation banking toward positive results, and in encouraging academics to research the benefits and detriments of banking; streams, rivers, and wetlands in North Carolina have benefitted tremendously from his efforts. Two mitigation bankers deserve particular credit, or blame, for my interest in working on mitigation banking: Don Carr and Bud Needham. I regret that Don passed away before this book was finished; Bud and I lost a guide through the policy swamps of Washington, DC, and a great friend. The restored ecosystem at Timberlake is a fitting tribute to Don’s relentless vision of how mitigation banking can leave lasting benefits for ecosystems, and particularly for birds.
Finally, working on this project has required me to read books and think thoughts that are far beyond my normal intellectual universe. I would not have done so had it not been for Rebecca’s contagious intellectual enthusiasm.