Conservation planning for offsetting the impacts of development: a case study of biodiversity and renewable energy in the Mojave Desert

Balancing society's competing needs of development and conservation requires careful consideration of tradeoffs. Renewable energy development and biodiversity conservation are often considered beneficial environmental goals. However, the direct footprint and disturbance of renewable energy can displace species' habitat and negatively impact populations and communities if sited without ecological consideration. To mitigate residual impacts, offsets have emerged as a potentially useful tool after trying to avoid, minimize, or restore affected sites. Yet where many species or many sites are involved, the problem of efficiently designing a set of offset sites becomes increasingly complex. Spatial conservation prioritization tools are designed to handle this problem, but have seen little application to offset siting and analysis. To address this need we designed an offset siting support tool for the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) of California, and present a case study of ...