Monarch CCAA

Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances, or CCAA, is a voluntary conservation agreement between the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (the Service) and one or more parties with the intention of addressing the needs of at-risk species before they become listed as endangered or threatened. Non-federal landowners (including property owners, easement holders, and lease holders) voluntarily commit to certain conservation actions to help stabilize or restore the species. In turn, the Service provides participating property owners with an Enhancement of Survival (EOS) permit containing assurances that they will not be required to implement additional conservation measures beyond those in the agreement, even if the species is listed. By proactively incentivizing conservation action ahead of regulation, such agreements provide benefits to the at-risk species as well as the Service and the participating landowners and land managers, all with the goal that listing becomes unnecessary. Given its voluntary nature, industry participants can terminate their involvement in the agreement at any time. The agreement also encourages involvement of Federal lands as well through an integrated Candidate Conservation Agreement (CCA). For more information on Ecological Services Conservation Agreements, visit the US Fish & Wildlife Service page.

The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus plexippus) has experienced drastic population losses over the past 20 years, putting the species in jeopardy. A primary cause of this decline is habitat loss throughout the monarch butterfly’s migratory range, particularly lands containing native flowering plants and its obligate host plant, milkweed (Asclepias species).

The Service is currently evaluating population trends and the needed conservation response to help the monarch butterfly recover to a sustainable level. The Service is expected to make a listing determination in December 2024. In the meantime, concerted conservation efforts are informing the Service’s species status assessment and addressing the widespread population declines of other pollinator species. Preventing the threatened or endangered status, or ultimate loss of the species, requires an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to ensure long-term conservation and enhancement of the monarch butterfly’s habitat.

The agreement represents an important public-private partnership between industry and the Service to encourage voluntary conservation. 

If the agreement was not developed and the monarch butterfly became a Federal listed species, energy and transportation organizations could expect regulatory uncertainty, additional permitting or minimization requirements, and potential project delays. 

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the Rights-of-Way as Habitat Working Group led the development of the collaborative CCAA/CCA. The UIC established a joint fund in January 2018 to pool funding from collaborators across the energy and transportation sectors. Collaborators also provided in-kind time and technical expertise to support the CCAA/CCA development.

More than 40 partners, along with the Service, industry experts, and other collaborators make up the CCAA Task Force. Additional technical assistance is provided by Stantec (formerly Cardno), the Environmental Policy Innovation Center and the University of Georgia Business Law Clinic. UIC also serves as the Programmatic Administrator for the agreement.

The agreement demonstrates the significant interest and investment in habitat conservation that can be made across the transportation and energy sectors in the United States. Rights-of-way and related landscapes provide valuable opportunities to connect available habitats, provide diverse breeding and feeding habitat (especially compared to much of the surrounding landscape), and offer areas that are generally safe from major disturbances or future development. By providing regulatory assurances, the agreement encourages energy companies and transportation agencies to voluntarily adapt their land management practices to incorporate native flowering plants, increase the use of Integrated Vegetation Management best practices, and implement other conservation measures to maintain habitat for the monarch butterfly and other pollinators.

Never before has a agreement been created for this scale of voluntary conservation. It is first-of-its-kind in terms of geographic extent (across 48 states!) and broad multi-sector collaboration – creating an innovative model for large-scale landscape conservation. The agreement incentivizes industry-wide efforts to create on-the-ground conservation benefits, while aligning with other important initiatives such as the Mid-America Monarch Conservation Strategy and the Rights-of-Way as Habitat Working Group’s geospatial habitat database and related efforts. We hope this agreement inspires similar efforts by other industries to address monarchs and other species in need!

Conservation measures that benefit monarchs include many practices that are consistent with vegetation management requirements on rights-of-way and other energy and transportation lands. Management actions such as brush removal, conservation-timed mowing, seeding or planting of native wildflowers, and pollinator-focused integrated vegetation management (IVM) are some of the conservation measures included in the CCAA/CCA.

Applicants are only required to conduct conservation measures that address the key threats to the species that are within their control. As a result, some conservation measures may apply differently to land managers depending on their management ability, land ownership, easement requirements, or other constraints on management abilities. In addition, participants will be required by the Service to conduct some tracking of where conservation measures occur and undertake some simple monitoring protocols to verify their on-the-ground results.