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Why Private Land?

Around the world, landowners enhance wildlife habitat, clean water, and provide recreational opportunities. This issue of PERC Reports features stories of private conservation in the public interest.

Published on: November 24, 2015

Bringing the Sharing Economy to Private Land

Not a day goes by without someone bemoaning the lack of public access to private lands in the West. Gone are the good old days, many say, when landowners welcomed visitors. Today, it seems like there are β€œno-trespassing” signs across every gate and orange paint on every fence post, blocking access to fishing, hunting, […]

Published on: November 24, 2015

Farming Water Quality in Kansas

[…] improve their land use practices while maintaining their lands in agricultural production. The city of Wichita, in return, reduces water treatment costs and extends the lifespan of the Cheney Lake reservoir while providing more than 300,000 people with clean water. For more information, see PERC’s case study β€œCheney Lake Watershed: Farming Water Quality in Kansas.”

Published on: November 24, 2015

Trading for Water in Bolivia

[…] wire? Upstream land users wanted an alternative source of income and to develop a long-term revenue stream without harming native flora and fauna. Selling honey provides a reliable income, and because bees depend on healthy vegetation for honey production, upstream users have an incentive to protect the forest. Barbed wire also helps keep cattle […]

Published on: November 24, 2015

Property Rights to Fish

As I have noted before, the world’s fisheries are in decline. The problem, it is widely recognized, is the failure of traditional government command-and-control approaches to fisheries management. Faced with the collapse of their fisheries, many nations are instead switching to systems of property rights for fisheries, the most important of which are individual […]

Published on: November 20, 2015

Excellence in Teaching Economics

The Foundation for Teaching Economics has honored Terry Anderson with the Gary Walton Award for Excellence in Teaching Economics. The successes of free market environmentalism are a testament to a career of fostering the economic way of thinking.

Published on: November 12, 2015

Conflicting Approaches to Saving Mother Earth

Why are traditional environmentalists and free market environmentalists still two distinct groups, often pitted against each other in an effort to help the environment?

Published on: November 12, 2015

Indonesia Under Fire

Forest fires are raging across Southeast Asia, in what is being called β€œthe biggest environmental crime of the twenty-first century.” A lack of property rights is partly to blame for the smoke and fires that plague the area.

Published on: November 10, 2015