Professor of Law and Director
Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy, Stetson University College of Law
Gulfport, FL, United States
Royal C. Gardner is Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy at Stetson University in Florida, USA. His introduction to wetland law and policy dates back to the 1990 EPA-Army MOA that first articulated the federal goal of no net loss. After serving in the Pentagon as the Department of the Army’s principal wetland attorney, he joined the Stetson Law faculty in 1994. He was a member of the National Research Council Committee that produced the 2001 report that was an impetus for 2008 compensatory mitigation rule.
Internationally, Professor Gardner served as Chair of the Scientific and Technical Review Panel of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands from 2013-2018. He has spoken at the United Nations and testified before a World Bank arbitration panel on wetland issues. He has coauthored amicus briefs on behalf of aquatic scientists and scientific societies, including in the U.S. Supreme Court case of County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, as well as in WOTUS-related cases.
His research and scholarship focus on U.S. and international wetland legal and policy issues, with an emphasis on biodiversity offsets. He is the author of Lawyers, Swamps, and Money: U.S. Wetland Law, Policy, and Politics and a lead author of the Global Wetland Outlook, the Ramsar Convention’s flagship publication.
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