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In episode 93 of the Investing in Impact podcast, I sit down with Nick Dilks, Co Founder and Managing Partner of Ecosystem Investment Partners (EIP), a firm that has quietly become one of the most important players in large scale ecological restoration in the United States.
Nick grew up splitting time between Philadelphia and a family farm on the Chesapeake Bay. That early exposure to land and water shaped a life long focus on conservation. After a decade at The Conservation Fund structuring complex land deals, he co founded EIP in 2006 to answer a simple but difficult question.
Can you use private capital, at scale, to restore degraded ecosystems while still meeting the financial expectations of institutional investorsOver almost twenty years, EIP has shown that the answer is yes.
The firm acquires degraded land, restores wetlands, streams, and habitats, then sells mitigation credits to public and private developers that are required by law to offset their environmental impacts. It is a space where environmental protection, infrastructure, housing, and finance all intersect.
In this conversation, Nick explains how mitigation banking actually works, why these markets are fully regulated and compulsory, how a new $400 million dollar fund will expand EIP’s work, and why he believes more young people should bring serious financial skills into the environmental sector.
Nick’s path into environmental investing started in a very practical place.
He spent his childhood in the city, but his extended family ran a farm on the Chesapeake Bay. That mix of urban life and working land turned into an early fascination with conservation, not as an abstract idea, but as something rooted in real places and real economics.
That interest led him into land trusts and eventually into a ten year run at The Conservation Fund, an organization that acquires and protects land across the United States.
There he learned the mechanics of land deals, conservation easements, financing structures, and how transactions can protect millions of acres when they are done well.
Even at that stage, he saw that land conservation had two sides.
That dual lens set the foundation for EIP.
By the mid 2000s, one problem kept showing up in conservation.
There was simply not enough philanthropic and public money to fund the scale of restoration that was needed. Government budgets and charitable dollars could not cover everything.
At the same time, a different world was starting to mature. Environmental markets linked to laws like the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act were becoming more structured.
In particular, mitigation banking was emerging as a way to:
Nick and his partners, including co founder Fred Danforth, saw an opening.
Could they build a firm that:
If it worked, investors would receive financial returns. Communities would get needed infrastructure, housing, and industry. The environment would see permanent gains in water quality and habitat.
That is the business that became Ecosystem Investment Partners.
Under the Clean Water Act and related laws, any project that impacts wetlands, streams, or certain habitats has to follow a clear hierarchy:
This applies to:
Once a project has done everything it can to avoid and minimize impacts, it still needs to offset what remains. The law requires that the damaged resources be replaced by restoring or enhancing similar resources nearby, for example:
Developers have two main choices:
EIP focuses on the second path. They:
Pricing of credits is market driven, not set by government. EIP has to:
It is a real market. Developers are free to do their own mitigation instead, but many choose to buy credits because it is faster and more reliable than trying to become a restoration expert overnight.
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To make this real, Nick points to Eastern Kentucky.
The region has one of the highest densities of streams in the country. It also has a complex history of mining, logging, and other activities that have degraded water systems. At the same time, the state is trying to improve transportation access and economic opportunity.
When the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet builds or expands roads, it often cannot avoid impacting streams. That triggers a significant need for stream mitigation across the region.
EIP stepped in about fifteen years ago to meet that need:
There is another layer that matters. Many of the firms that handle earthmoving and construction for these projects are former coal contractors.
As the coal sector declined, these companies lost work. Stream restoration gave them a new line of business that connects their existing skills to a different outcome.
It is a good example of how an environmental market can:
Roughly half of mitigation buyers in the United States are private entities, not governments.
Credit buyers include:
Public buyers include:
If their project affects wetlands, streams, or habitat in a regulated way, they are required to mitigate those impacts. For many of them, purchasing credits is the most efficient path.
From their perspective, buying credits:
From the public’s perspective, it also provides assurance. Credit projects are designed, permitted, and often already performing before the credits are sold. That means the replacement ecosystem is real, not hypothetical.
EIP recently raised a $400 million dollar fund to continue and expand this work.
The new fund will:
The focus does not change. The firm will keep centering on:
The fund is another signal that investors now see ecological restoration as a serious asset class with a track record, not just an idea.
There is growing interest in voluntary carbon credits, nature based solutions, and new types of environmental credits that companies can buy to meet climate or nature goals.
Nick sees potential in those efforts, but he draws a clear line between them and EIP’s core focus.
Mitigation credits for wetlands, streams, endangered species, and water quality in the United States are:
Most newer carbon or nature credit systems are voluntary and still evolving. They can be valuable experiments, but they lack the same regulatory backbone.
For EIP’s investors and customers, that regulatory certainty is a key part of the value proposition.
So EIP has stayed focused on the more mature, compulsory markets rather than shifting into voluntary offsets.
One question that comes up often is whether environmental rules and mitigation requirements make it harder to build housing and infrastructure that communities clearly need.
Nick’s answer is clear.
Clean water, functional ecosystems, and habitat protection are not optional.
At the same time, people need homes, schools, and roads. The strength of laws like the Clean Water Act is that they make room for both realities.
Mitigation banking is part of the efficiency story, not the obstacle. It allows:
It does not solve every issue in housing or infrastructure, but it ensures the environment is not forgotten in the rush to build.
A final important question is what happens to the land once a project is complete and the credits are sold.
Regulations require that mitigation sites be:
In many cases the land later becomes:
EIP’s role is not just to restore the land temporarily. It is to put those restored systems on a path where they are legally protected and can function as part of a larger landscape for generations.
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