Rethinking standard biodiversity offset calculations: Combining standard offset metrics with more ecologically relevant measures to improve biodiversity persistence

Biodiversity offsetting has been increasingly used around the world to compensate for the rising environmental impacts caused by development[1]. There is considerable scepticism about the effectiveness of offsets to achieve ‘no net loss’, particularly due to the lack of consistent metrics for measuring biodiversity losses and gains[1]. Current habitat based metrics often fail to capture biodiversity values at development sites [2], resulting in offsets which rarely compensate effectively for what is lost. Here we aim to understand how commonly used offset metrics differ from the larger pool of biodiversity metrics in science, and to identify options for improvement. We reviewed 259 publicat…