Professional Documents
Culture Documents
NRS 383
Gregory Latta
Term Paper
Abstract
America’s endangered wildlife is something that affects our nation; whether it is cultural,
economic, or for public concern. Wildlife can provide services such as grazing or producing
foods. They can also attract tourists which can bring in an economic benefit to communities.
With species that have such a high value to our world, we have seen little progress in providing
safe land or for proper funding. People in areas that have wildlife that are important to their
ecological communities engage in activities such as hunting, bird watching, fishing and
abundance of wildlife. Although, endangered species must have areas where they are not harmed
by these activities in order to keep their ecological impact. Reallocation and development of
proper funding will provide us the opportunity to develop these lands. Representative Jeff
Fortenberry from Nebraska has proposed the bill H.R. 4647: Recovering America’s Wildlife Act
in an attempt to reallocate and distribute proper state funding for America’s endangered wildlife.
More funding will allow more development of areas that can restore endangered species.
Introduction
The goal of this bill is to be able to preserve land and wildlife for future generations to
enjoy through recreation. Recovering species that are listed as threatened or endangered and to
prevent fish and wildlife species from diminishing to the point of no return will require federal
protection under the Endangered Species Act. Being able to provide a safe space of land will be
cost effective for future generations. The idea of this bill came from observing nongovernmental
conservation organizations. These organizations brought up the need for preservation of wildlife
and how important it is. This is why Fortenberry created the bill to provide funding for an
important issue.
The bill is intended to correct a market failure. That market failure is an unequal
separation of funds in this area between wildlife conservation and recreation. A majority of state
and federal funds goes towards recreation. This is allowing animal populations to decline and
causing them to be listed as endangered. These programs are handled mostly at the state level
which then makes creating the funding more of a challenge. This paper will focus on the
correction of this market failure and what decisions we can have be sustainable.
Literature Review
There are three reports that look closely into economic aspects of conservation. The first analysis
focuses on integrating economic costs in conservation planning. The second piece of literature
looks more in depth into the biodiversity in wildlife conservation through a method called smart
growth planning. They look at the values of species richness and put these ideas in to land use
planning. The third article looks at a broader spectrum of incorporating mainstream economics
into wildlife conservation. These writings all discuss on similar ideas and provide textual support
to Fortenberry’s bill.
provides the necessary components to well organized conservation because there is a need to
focus on effective resource allocation for endangered species. Systematic conservation planning
seeks to find maximum benefits for the resources being spent on or minimizing the overall cost
in resources. Arponen et al. (2010) touches on the topic that if we focus too greatly on
economical benefits, we can have a market failure where the locations chosen for conservation
are cheap but not beneficial. Data characteristics show the focus on economic costs versus the
cost is much higher than variation in biodiversity when protecting species. Without the economic
impacts and proper funding, there would be little biodiversity to begin with. When the cost to
benefit ratio is at its highest, we can achieve and obtain more with the available resources that
can be afforded with little opportunity cost. A prioritization approach is used where they reflect
on if the cheapest option for land use would be the most beneficial one for biodiversity and
quality of the area. The minimum set coverage and the maximum set coverage are trying to
achieve the highest conservation benefit for the lowest dollar amount (Conservation Biology,
2010). Maximum benefit approaches often have better results with the goals of conservation
practitioners.
al. (2011). It is where they balance the structural needs of a human population that is rapidly
increasing while also maintaining land for wildlife and the environment. Although, the data
needed to correctly use these objectives for biodiversity is not usually available to land use
planners. In this article, it is discussed through an approach that allows for state and federal
resource management agencies to give the data on biodiversity conservation and for wildlife
conservation. The data shows species that should be of high priority and areas that are high
priority for conservation purposes. In a study conducted by Underwood et al. (2011), they went
to the state of Arizona to conduct their research. To find areas that have high priority for wildlife
conservation, they relied on data showing both threats to biodiversity and species richness
(Landscape & Urban Planning, 2011). To provide a useful tool that allowed for the incorporation
of smart growth planning, they identified areas that had the greatest endangerment threat,
conservation need and species that are often used for recreation activities such as hunting or
fishing. The areas that were weighted in the experiment came back high in species richness and
remained similar throughout the project. The areas that were under the most population stress
and threats were the population centers. To create the final tool, they combined stress and species
richness to obtain their results (Landscape & Urban Planning, 2011). The tool and methods
developed in this article are to help resource management agencies provide land use planners
with the information they need to put wildlife and biodiversity conservation into growth planning
Hall et al. touches on the topic of involving modern economics in the need for wildlife
conservation. The article discusses on areas such as trying to conserve wildlife while dealing
with a rapid growing human population and keeping our natural resources in abundance. Their
goal is to maintain wildlife biodiversity and high population levels while we also need land for
uses such as agriculture and urban expansion. Although, the solutions to these problems become
difficult because mainstream economics are in conflict with wildlife conservation; in their
writings they elaborate on what they think is the problem with today’s conservation methods,
why economics will cause a market failure in this field and how to incorporate economics into
conservation without a market failure. Today’s economic system does not work in a way that
benefits the goals of wildlife conservation. Decisions are solely made upon the most cost to
benefit ratios. Hall et al. wrote on the topic of how they use GDP (gross domestic product) to
measure the welfare of a trade such as this, but this does not give an accurate representation to
the welfare of wildlife. Results of how mainstream economics are put into wildlife conservation
show. People decide how areas of our environment should be saved only based on its dollar
value, which in long term can have negative effects on our ecosystem (Wildlife Society Bulletin,
2000). Hall et al. uses the example of the whooping crane in the article. Millions of dollars are
put into conserving this one species while the benefits are not yet for sure. It is also discussed
how putting economic courses in schools can add to this effect and keeps this cycle going for
future generations.
Discussion