A smarter way for oil firms to pay for eco damage

Recommended article at New Scientist on the topic of what is considered by some as a smarter way for firms to pay for damage to the environment.

Companies are sometimes asked to preserve pristine land to compensate for the damage their operations do - both directly and through the roads, houses and towns that spring up nearby. This poses a problem because the companies can easily claim credit for protecting land their activities would never have damaged anyway.

Now Joe Kiesecker of The Nature Conservancy in Fort Collins, Colorado, and colleagues are applying a new approach. Using computer models based on data from the US Department of the Interior, they predicted changes in land use to identify locations linked to the Jonah natural gas field in Wyoming that are likely to be developed, even if they are some distance from the gas field itself. By paying to prevent such development, the oil company BP America was able to show that it is protecting endangered habitat.