Ecosystem services and biodiversity are the foundation to human sustainable development and are supported by ecosystem structure and function. Due to the complexity and uncertainty in ecosystem development, most of the impacts derived from development projects are still considered significant after applying mitigation measures that aim to reduce the adverse influences. To reinforce biodiversity concerns in environmental impact assessment (EIA) and to ensure environmental quality, biodiversity offsets (or ecological compensation in general) are proposed in EIA process and implemented during the development. Many tasks are designed to achieve the ultimate goal of no net loss in biodiversity. This project aims to provide the necessary GIS databases and technical guidance to support the EIA reviewing process. Major tasks include developing a draft of EIA technical guidance of biodiversity offset, standard formats of biodiversity offset proposal and monitoring report, two examples of biodiversity offset proposal, building up feature layers (species distribution and protected area boundaries) by a GIS, hosting two expert round table meetings and two public meetings, and visiting a biodiversity offset program and compiling recent developments in the US. The draft technical guidance contains the recognition principles of initiation of biodiversity offsets, assessment procedure and fundamental contents of corresponding documents, of which formats and examples are provided. Main topics concerned by experts in the meetings were identification of biodiversity components to be targeted, offset funding requirement, supervision, penalty and management, while many participants of public meetings concerned about the startup thresholds, offset ratios and assessment procedure. The GIS layers, including the boundaries of nature reserves, forest reserves, national park, wildlife refuges, major wildlife habitats, wetlands of importance and distribution of 192 protected species (including 33 endangered species), are in shapefile format and readily usable by GIS software. As the enactment of Wetlands Conservation Act, integrating biodiversity offsets into the EIA process is urgent. We suggest EPA to adopt the biodiversity offset policy in the EIA using the design proposed in this projects and to implement the policy through the public hearing and legal process as soon as possible. Finally, the databases compiled in this project are the state-of-the-art information for the wildlife and protected areas in Taiwan and are the necessary foundation to initiate the biodiversity offset. These data should be updated once new information becomes available. In addition, the construction of a website that can provide public searching and analyzing the databases is the next urgent step to implement the policy.
