Most state park systems are largely dependent upon general fund appropriations, which are supported by tax dollars, and dedicated funds for operating and capital expenditures. When state budgets are tight these funds are often swept away from parks to help fund other state priorities. The threat of park closures and cuts in park services areContinue reading “A Closer Look at State Park Budgets”
Author Archives: admin
Local Food Makes Strange Dining Companions
The revival of local food and local markets marches under the banner of the left, but its resistance to centralization also appeals to conservatives.
Shoot an Elephant, Save a Community?
Today in Defining Ideas PERC’s Terry Anderson and Shawn Regan point out that when GoDaddy CEO Bob Parson’s video of himself shooting a bull elephant in Zimbabwe went viral it unleashed a stampede of criticism and a campaign by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) urging people to drop their GoDaddy accounts. To the non-hunter, suchContinue reading “Shoot an Elephant, Save a Community?”
Kenyan parks face development pressure
Kenya might make 20 times more money from the Masai Mara Game Reserve, which is just a sixth of Tanzania’s Serengeti, but this, reports Special Correspondent WYCLIFFE MUGA, comes at a huge environmental cost . By Wycliffe Muga PERC Media Fellow In what amounted to a direct challenge thrown at Kenyan tourism in February,Continue reading “Kenyan parks face development pressure”
Shoot an Elephant, Save a Community
When people who live near wild elephants understand how they can benefit economically, they have an incentive to protect the wildlife.
Do federal land programs crowd out private land conservation?
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?”
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”