What effect do U.S. federal land programs have on private conservation? A new paper by PERC fellows Nick Parker and Wally Thurman examines how private land trusts respond to changes in the federal estate and federal conservation programs. In particular, the authors ask whether increases in government land conservation “crowd out” private land trust conservation.Continue reading “Do federal land programs crowd out private land conservation?”
Author Archives: admin
Do federal land programs crowd out private land conservation?
PERC scholars compare the Conservation and Wetland Reserves, both federal programs, with two private land trusts,The Nature Conservancy and the Land Trust Alliance,to determine their influence on each other.
Designated Wilderness: A Cost or a Benefit?
The United States land mass covers nearly 2.3 billion acres. About 27 percent of that is managed by one of the government’s four federal land agencies: the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and National Park Service. And 18 percent of that, or five percent of the nation, is managed asContinue reading “Designated Wilderness: A Cost or a Benefit?”
Results not rhetoric for wilderness protection
No politics. No advocacy. Just boots-on-the-ground work. That’s the motto of the Selway-Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation, a nonprofit wilderness conservation group based in Idaho and Montana, about which Rocky Barker (former PERC media fellow) writes in the Idaho Statesman. The group focuses its efforts on protecting two wilderness areas in Idaho: the 1.3 million-acre Selway-Bitterroot wildernessContinue reading “Results not rhetoric for wilderness protection”
Barcoding trees to save them
A property rights solution to tree poaching in Liberia: [T]he elected government of Harvard-trained President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has signed a deal with the European Union to place timber sales on a permanently legal footing. The deal, agreed to this month, makes use of a unique national timber-tracking system that requires every legally harvestable treeContinue reading “Barcoding trees to save them”
A Political List
In a new deal with environmentalists, the Obama administration has agreed to work through a backlog list of species that require additional study to determine if they should be given protection under the Endangered Species Act. Some of these species were proposed for protection in 1973 when the Act was passed. Nearly 40 years later,Continue reading “A Political List”
Liberia is saving its rainforests with barcoding
The West African nation of Liberia has partnered with the European Union in a unique attempt to protect its remaining forests by barcoding every harvestable tree.
Video: Saving Ocean Fisheries with Property Rights
Saving Ocean Fisheries with Property Rights is the first in a series of PERC videos that will document how free market environmentalism solves real-world conservation problems. Donald Leal, PERC’s research director, and Mark Lundsten, a former boat captain on the Bering Sea, combine research and industry experience to describe what happens when open-access fishing is replaced withContinue reading “Video: Saving Ocean Fisheries with Property Rights”
Same Old Song and Dance Over CA Parks
Once again California is threatening to close state parks. Seventy (out of 270) parks are on the chopping block this time around (see an interactive map of the planned closures). The plan is to place the parks in “caretaker status,” which means gates would be closed and people would not be allowed to enter. What a dismal idea from a stateContinue reading “Same Old Song and Dance Over CA Parks”
Is fair trade coffee fair?
The conventional view is that the premium paid for fair trade coffee results in higher wages and better living standards for coffee farmers in the developing world. A new study published in Ecological Economics this month challenges that view. The study finds that the effects of certified fair trade coffee production on poverty levels are notContinue reading “Is fair trade coffee fair?”