Lecture 10: Wildlife utilisation and valuation Flashcards

Question

Ecological Services can be valued by support they provide:

Answer 1

e.g. marshes: Remove pollutants, support fisheries, control floodwater, provide recreation value etc Thus their value equates to $100-$8000/ha/yr ^ The value of the marshes in removing pollutants can be estimated by comparing the service to the cost of a facility to replace these services if they were removed

Answer 2

In New York City: new water treatment facilities were required by federal regulations. The cost of this choice was US$ 6-8 billion for a new water filtration plant Instead they paid landowners in the Catskill mountains to improve farm management techniques and prevent run-off of waste and nutrients into nearby watercourses = US$1.5 billion Water bills for New Yorkers went up by 9%, rather than doubling as they would have if a filtration plant had been built.

Answer 3

Some ecological service values can be driven by aesthetics e.g. Value of a landscape, or a charismatic mammal. Areas, and even individual animals can be valued in terms of how much revenue they bring. Forms of financial contribution: paying to visit reserve, transport costs, Food, lodging and guides Hunting licenses, etc.

Answer 4

1) USA: $59 billion/yr for wild services hunting, fishing and nature watching 2) Kenya: (1979) Amboseli NP generated $40/ha/yr (50x the net profit which would have been accumulated under best agricultural practice). Lion estimated worth $27,000/yr Herd elephants worth $610,000/yr Who gets this money – probably not those displaced by the NP – a separate issue 3) Reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone, USA Cost-benefit analysis * Cost = $200,000 loss though big game/livestock losses * Benefit = $19million/yr through tourism

Answer 5

Durham case study: a study examining willingness to pay to protect two species that are predicted to disappear from Kruger in future under CC. ^ See Palmer 2009 note: Actual expenditure is often less than peoples’ willingness to pay. ^i.e. total value exceeds market value

Answer 6

direct vs indirect value *Economic value – what someone is willing to pay - Direct *Ecological economics -Integrates valuing biodiversity in economic terms and including ecology ^ indirect – more intangible benefits – hard to put a price on The direct values are usually easy to quantify – e.g. the selling price of logs. The indirect value is more difficult to value, e.g. the need to value a lifetime’s supply of bushmeat from a forest that is left standing. *The economic value is the price that someone is willing to pay for an item, and does not necessarily reflect its overall worth. *The field of ecological economics is one that tries to integrate the valuation of biodiversity and ecology into economic models and terms, in order that such systems are appropriately valued

Answer 7

Potential value (option value) not yet yielded values - I.e. future value *Difficult to predict e.g. new malaria drug? *Ginko tree – industry now worth $500million/yr *Extreme environment bacteria – now have great industrial applications (considered without value in the past) e.g. PCR ($200million/yr) usesThermus aquaticus * Microalgae now known to be beneficial as a neutraceutical and a source of algal oil for bioenergy Existence value (contingent value) *can be calculated by e.g. ‘how much would you pay to save the whale?’ ^ By combining these we might be able to arrive at a Total Economic Value (TEV); operative word is economic, worth is another matter *Potential, or option, value of an item is a reflection of a potential but as yet unyielded value of a species or system. *Bacteria Thermus aquaticus, which is central to the running of modern day PCR machines in biology labs. *The existence, or contingent, value of something, is a reflection of the price that someone is willing to pay to preserve it *Existence value is a prominent example of non-use value, as they do not require that utility be derived from direct use of the resource: the utility comes from simply knowing the resource exists. *The bequest value is the value of satisfaction from preserving a natural environment for future generations

Answer 8

*Habitat: Old growth Douglas Fir – stumpage $20,000/ha - high value resource *$20million/1000ha = 1 pair spotted owls – costly conservation *Area used by a pair of spotted owls in forests of the USA is about 1000ha. *The pristine Douglas Fir forests that they use are worth about $20,000/ha in terms of stumpage (i.e. forestry) *To conserve each pair of owls a profit of $20million has to be foregone. *It is unlikely that each pair of owls generates this much alternative income (although the value of the forests for water management, carbon fixation, erosion control etc is another matter)

Answer 9

*127 pairs. Maine wanted to have 200 pairs. *Random survey: state bond issue of $(1-101) Residents of the state were asked: would you approve to pay? 38% - No (not willing to contribute) 62% - Yes (willing to contribute) average approved value was $48 >> $20.7 million/yr (if collected from all citizens) ^ helps to determine whats a reasonable amount to spend on the project Determine economic benefit vs costs: From these figures it was estimated that the existence value of eagles in Maine was about $20.7 million per year. Surveys like these can act as a guide to government in terms of how much money should be put aside for particular projects.

Answer 10

One way is to survey motivation for visiting conservation areas: e.g. this survey of drivers of nature based tourism in the UK conducted by Crabbe (2012) * Questionnaire of ecotourists * Eight UK protected areas visited * Explored motivation for visitation * Calculated spend within PA and regionally * Also calculated a travel-cost (I.e. a surrogate for willingness to pay) Found people value biodiversity over facilities – important message to feed back to nature reserve managers. Crabbe also found that the biodiversity motivation of visitors is related to the diversity of the sites they visit & ecotourists are generally good at evaluating biodiversity of the sites they visit & Willingness to pay an entrance fee to PA was determined by biodiversity: *People are unwilling to pay to enter a site unless some biodiversity threshold is reached. *But they also have a cap on their willingness to pay to see wildlife. *Interesting to note that 50 species is about the limit to the number of bird species you could see at a wider countryside site, without having to go to a PA. & travel cost + actual spend were also influenced by biodiversity of PA

Answer 11

Wild harvesting e.g. forestry, fisheries: e.g. USA: 1976-80, ~4.1% of US GDP ($27 billion/yr) Even higher proportion in lower income countries e.g. Sarawak: hunted wild pigs ~$40 million/yr (Caldecott 1988) Supply and demand: *Demand for visitor passes to see Gorillas in Rwanda far exceed supply, hence the cost of permits has rapidly increased over the years so that now they stand at about $500 each – which brings substantial tourist income to the country. WWF is helping direct part of the fee to local people *Visitors to the Red Dunes in Namibia are keen to get to the site early in the morning, so hotels that are close to the entrance of the national park now charge a price that can be an order of magnitude more than similar accommodation and hour’s drive from the park. *Here the economic worth of nature – at least in terms of tourism can be easily demonstrated.

Answer 12

Communally owned natural resources vulnerable through overuse: e.g. Land with a carrying capacity for 100 cows *5 cows * 20 farmers *10 litres milk = 1000 litres/day *1 cow = 10 litres milk (1000 / 100), so 5 cows = 50 litres milk If 1 farmer grazes one extra cow >>> *1 cow = 9.9 litres milk (1000 / 101), so 6 cows = 59.4 litres milk Benefits the individual to add a cow & cost is shared (9.9 vs. 10 litres milk per cow) Hardin, G. (1968) A similar analogy can be applied to free-for-all fisheries Each individual acts for their short-term economic interest *It is to try to prevent this situation and the subsequent collapse of stock that quota systems such as fishing fleet quotas have been set in many regions. In the final section of this lecture I will concentrate on how the negative impacts of exploitation can be minimised to continue to protect biodiversity and minimise pollution, using examples of dept-for-nature swaps, emissions trading and emission reduction schemes

Answer 13

*Debts lead to a steady flow of money from lower to higher income countries >$50billion/yr *Conservation groups and wealthy nations buying debt to generate funds for conservation Costa Rica *1990 Nature Conservancy, WWF & Swedish govt bought >$10million of Costa Rica debt bonds (for <$2million) *Gave to Costa Rica, in exchange they agreed to spend $9.6million on a series of conservation projects See: http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/howwedoit/conservationfinance/index.html see figure: debt write-off for conservation is increasing Many developing countries have large debts owed to developed countries, yet these countries possess the majority of global biodiversity. These debts are often cited as a reason that effective conservation cannot be funded in such countries. One innovative scheme to help solve this issue is called ‘dept for nature swaps’. In such a system conservation organisations or wealthy nations have bought part of a developing country’s debt, and which they will then ‘write-off’ in exchange for the country undertaking positive conservation measures, which cost less that than value of the debt. See the Costa Rica example above. And the final example here, gives another example of the economics of biodiversity, where a country is willing to forego oil profits if they can be reimbursed some of that profit to maintain biodiversity

Lecture 10: Wildlife utilisation and valuation Flashcards

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