Wildlife Utilisation and Valuation Flashcards
Carbon storage in durham
Landuse change from 1945 to 2009
Movement from mostly agricultural to suburban- how has this affected C storage
surprisingly high carbon storage across a lot of land use types. Lowest storage is urban no garden, commercial only slightly higher. Suburbs get about 70% C storage that agriculture had
Most C storage is due to soils. Soil changes alter storage ability. Over Durham we have had a drop in C storage by about 30/40%. Main change in trees and soil.
Soil was about 166,122 megatonnes now 96,482. As carbon leaves a landscape tends to go up and contribute to global warming
Ecosystem service correlation
Little correlation between high biodiversity and high C storage. Cant use ecosystem services as a way to guarantee you’ll preserve spp (this isnt always acknowledged). There is some correlation eg recreation and biodiversity
What is the current (1997) economic value of ecosystem services
current economic value of 17 ecosystem services for 16 biomes, based on published studies and a few original calculations
$33 trillion/year
Global gross national product total is $18 trillion/year
Example of a climate change signal
Jackdaws declining across much of S Eu but incr in N- could be! Population changes may be the first
Recently a biodiversity indicator has been produced using abundance data for Eu Birds. CC models trying to predict incr or decl. By looking at pop trend of 2groups (incr/decl) they can produce early warming signals that highlight the role climate is having across EU
Goods definition
Have ‘market value’ eg palm tree shavings
Services definition
Difficult to value eg shallow water areas acting as nursery for fish
Can rate places on the services they provide
eg marshes
remvoing pollutants, supporting fisheries, controlling flood water, recreation value etc ($100-8000/ha/yr)
compare how marshes remove pollutants to a cost of a facility that would do the same
Talk about New York Water
NYC needed a new water treatment facility bc incr pop
Cost would have been $6-8 billion for a new filtration plant
Alternatively, could pay landowners in the Catskill Mountains to improve farm management techniques and prevent run off of waste and nutrients into nearby watercourses –> about $1.5 billion
They did this and water bills increased by 9% instead of doubling
Kenya national park
(1979) Amboseli
NP generated $40/ha/yr (50xnet profit under best agriculture)
Lions estimated to be worth $27,000/year
Herd of elephants $610,000/yr
How much would you pay to protect a species
Way of assessing value
Durham student when to Kruger national park and asked how much they would pay to protect 2 spp
People said 72 rand per person. Adds up to a lot. Can add this to ticket prices and say to governments this is how much people value
Wolves and Yellowstone
Cost benefit analysis
Cost- $200,000 loss through big game/live stock a year
Gain- $19 million/yr through tourism
Actual expenditure is often less than people’s willingness to pay
Ecological Economics
Tries to integrate valuation of biod and ecology into economic models and terms to ensure they are appropriately values
Direct economic value is what someone is willing to pay
Indirect more difficult to calculate
Potential/option value
The reflection of a potential but as yet unyielded value of a species or system. A spp whose potential value has recently been realised is the Ginko Tree which is a new multimillion pound business
and the bacteria Thermus aquaticus involved in PCR machines. $200 million/year
Existence value
Price someone is willing to pay to preserve a species. Can be used to justify conservation spending. Ultitiy comes from simply knowing a resource exists
Variations in values can be combined to produced a Total Economic Value for a system or species
Northern Spotted Owl Cost/Benefit
They need old growth and forests that people are keen to cut down. Each pair need 1000ha to breed–> $20 million
WHen it can be cut down and sold for $20,000/ha
Doesn’t add up. Economics favours destruction of the natural environment. It is unlikely the owls can generate income because they are hard to see and sparse. But the value of the forest is another matter. Could be useful in this situation to evaluate the existence of a species
Bald Eagle Pay?
127 pairs, want to get to 200
Maine
Random survey- state bond issue of $1-101 (value randomly set in each q)
38% No
62% Yes
Average was $48 –> $20.7 million a year!!
UK biodiversity
Questionnaire for ecotourists to 8 UK PAs
Explored motivation for visitation
Travel cost was a surrogate for willingness to pay
People valued biodiversity over facilities!!
More biod a site more people were willing to visit (incr entrance fee?)
Also people were pretty good at estimating biodiversity
Willing to pay only when a biodiversity threshold was reached- outside of what they would normally see in non protected area of countryside
Travel cost and actual spend (whilst at site and in surrounding areas) also strongly related to biodiversity
Value of wildlife harvesting (eg forestry and fisheries)
USA 1976-1980 about 4.1% of US GDP ($27 billion/year)
Even higher in less developed countries
eg Sarawak hunted wild pigs ($40 million.year)–> 40% GDP compared to construction and manufacturing which is 30%
Rwanda Volcanoes National Park
Huge demand for visitor passes
In 1999, 417 passes
In 2008, 17000
Price now around $1500
Similar visitors to Red Dunes in Namibia keen to get to the site early. Hotels nearer the site more expensive. Economic value of nature–> at least in terms of tourism can be easily demonstrated
Tragedy of commons
Communally owned natural resources vulnerable through over use
eg land with a carrying capacity of 100 cows
20 farmers can have 5 cows each =
10L of milk a day so 1000L overall a day
If one farmer has one extra cow=
101 cows produce 9.9L a day each
But the individual farmer gets 6*9.9= 59.4L
So the individual benefits
What is a debt for nature swap
Debts lead to a steady flow of money out of developing countries into developed ones >$50 billion/year
Debst have been sold to secondary companies for much less
Conservation groups and wealthy nationals buy these debts to create funds for conservation
Costa Rica- 1990
NC, WWF, Swedish Gov bought >$10 million of Costa Rica debt bonds for about $2 mill
Gave to Costa Rica in exchange for agreeing to spend $9.6 million on a series of conservation projects
These debts are often cited as the reason why these countries cant take cons action
