DOE Compliance Guidelines
U.S. Department of Energy Guidance for Biological Resources Management
Biological resources of the Hanford Site include the wildlife and plant species of concern as well as
habitat and landscape
scale features. The regulatory status, habitat condition and species occurrence, and administrative designations are used to classify
land areas into one of four levels of management consideration for the resources. Different management actions
(such as monitoring or mitigation) are associated with each level of concern. High value resources at levels III and
IV require compensatory mitigation or preservation. Details of this approach are described in the Hanford Site
Biological Resource Management Plan
.
Biological Resources Management Plan (BRMaP)
"As a federal land manager, the U.S.Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible through its Richland Operations Office
(DOE-RL) for conserving fish, wildlife, and plant populations and their habitats on the Hanford Site. The DOE-RL currently
manages impacts to threatened and endangered species through a number of separate initiatives, but no previous management
strategy has considered the overall health of the entire Hanford ecosystem. To fill this management void, a comprehensive
plan was needed that viewed Hanford's biological resources and their management from both site- and program-wide perspectives.
The Hanford Site Biological Resources Management Plan (BRMaP) was developed to meet this need. The plan provides DOE-RL and its contractors with a consistent approach to protect biological resources and monitor, assess, and mitigate impacts to them from site development and environmental cleanup and restoration activities. Approaches to better manage total resources also are provided in the plan. The BRMaP's primary purposes are to support DOE-RL's environmental cleanup and other Hanford missions; provide a mechanism for ensuring compliance with laws that relate to the management of potential impacts to biological resources; provide a framework for ensuring appropriate biological resource goals,objectives,and tools are in place to make DOE-RL an effective steward of Hanford's biological resources; and implement an ecosystem management approach for biological resources on the Site. As a comprehensive plan, BRMaP provides a framework to enable Hanford Site resource professionals to effectively fulfill their responsibilities and address Tribal, resource agency, and other stakeholder concerns about the Site's biological resources. The plan strongly emphasizes the benefits of good up-front planning for mitigation and restoration at Hanford."
---- Executive Summary, Hanford Site Biological Resources Management Plan, 2001.
Hanford Site Biological Resources Mitigation Strategy
The Hanford Site Biological Resources Mitigation Strategy (BRMiS) (pdf) was developed as a sub-tier document beneath BRMaP. The BRMiS defines the mitigation process that all Hanford Site projects should follow to ensure protection of important biological resources. Avoidance and minimization of impacts are stressed as the preferred means of mitigation over rectification and compensatory mitigation. For those cases where compensatory mitigation is needed, BRMiS describes the planning and implementation steps that should be taken, including impact quantification, mitigation area site selection, mitigation banking, replacement ratios, etc. While not intended to function as the Mitigation Action Plan (MAP) for any particular project, BRMiS provides detailed information and guidance for the development of project-specific MAP’s.