Interactive Service Area Map of The Wetlandsbank Group Mitigation Banks

Sunday, August 2, 2009

The Wetlandsbank Group Story

The Wetlandsbank Group (TWG) was founded in 1992, in Florida, through the pioneering efforts of civil engineers David L. John and Robert H. Miller, and experienced land use attorney, George I. Platt.


In 1993, TWG launched its first mitigation bank in the City of Pembroke Pines, a growing city close to the Everglades in Broward County, Florida. The City owned a 345-acre parcel of vacant, highly degraded wetlands that had been invaded by exotic plants. TWG and the City entered into a negotiated mitigation bank agreement, the first of its kind in the United States. TWG agreed to design and construct a new ecosystem for the property, eradicate the exotic species and replace them with a mixture of ten typical everglades habitats including cypress stands, emergent marshes, tree islands and sawgrass prairie. The project was permitted in 1994 and became the first wetlands mitigation bank in the U.S. to transfer a credit with the Army Corps of Engineers. The mitigation bank expanded to 475 acres and has been transferred to the City of Pembroke Pines as the long term steward, renamed the Chapel Trail Nature Preserve.


TWG’s second bank, Panther Island Mitigation Bank, is one of the premier wetland restoration projects in Southwest Florida. As the name indicates, Panther Island has also created habitat credits for the endangered Florida Panther, as well as the endangered wood stork. Located contiguous with portions of Audubon of Florida’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, the mitigation bank project provides a regionally significant wetland restoration and enhancement program benefitting both the freshwater wetland systems and habitat value in the Corkscrew Regional Eco-System Watershed. The Audubon of Florida will become the long-term managers of 2,778 acres in Panther Island, and have entered into an agreement to expand the mitigation of the project by an additional 1,700 acres.


TWG principals helped finance and partnered on the successful Flint Creek Wetlands Mitigation Bank project in Alabama which has subsequently sold out all of its credits.


TWG has recently permitted Blackwater Creek Mitigation Bank. The 347-acre restoration project located in fast-growing Lake County, Florida will provide freshwater wetland credits to the important Wekiva River Basin north of Orlando.


The Wetlandsbank Group has two mitigation banks in Georgia with the Legacy Farms Stream Bank south of Atlanta and Broxton Rocks Mitigation Bank providing wetland and stream credits through the Ocmulgee River, corridor.


Delta Mitigation Bank is located in Tallahatchie, Mississippi. The bank covers the Yazoo Basin in the Mississippi Alluvial Floodplains, or the “Delta” region; and the North Independent Streams Basin, south of Memphis.


TWG is also working on new mitigation bank, stream bank and habitat conservation bank opportunities in numerous regions of the Southeast where we have identified a need. In order to fully and properly explore these opportunities, TWG has developed a Mitigation Bank Matrix© that acts as an indicator of the prospects for success of mitigation sites that are presented to TWG for review. TWG is pleased to explore opportunities for private and public-private ventures.


The Wetlandsbank Group is committed to providing sustainable solutions to development activities which impact the natural environment by creating profitable and principled projects which restore impaired lands to a productive and functional state.

The Wetlandsbank Group Mitigation Banking Presentation