Environmental Markets: The Power of Regulation

In their Perspective (“Restoration of ecosystem services for environmental markets,” 31 July, p. 575), M. A. Palmer and S. Filoso call for direct measurement of ecosystem processes and third-party verification. This step is a critical one for the burgeoning compensatory mitigation industry to preserve, or recover, its credibility. However, Palmer and Filoso did not mention those who actually control ecosystem markets and did not consider how more rigorous restoration quality checks could provide an economic incentive to reduce ecosystem impacts in the first place.