The primary goal of invasive species management is to eliminate or reduce populations of invasive species. Although management efforts are often motivated by broader goals such as to reduce the ...negative impacts of invasive species on ecosystems and society, there has been little assessment of the consistency between population-based (e.g., removing invaders) and broader goals (e.g., recovery of ecological systems) for invasive species management. To address this, we conducted a comprehensive review of studies (N = 151) that removed invasive species and assessed ecological recovery over time. We found positive or mixed outcomes in most cases, but 31% of the time ecological recovery did not occur or there were negative ecological outcomes, such as increases in non-target invasive species. Ecological recovery was more likely in areas with relatively little anthropogenic disturbance and few other invaders, and for the recovery of animal populations and communities compared to plant communities and ecosystem processes. Elements of management protocols, such as whether invaders were eradicated (completely removed) versus aggressively suppressed (≥90% removed), did not affect the likelihood of ecological recovery. Our findings highlight the importance of considering broader goals and unintended outcomes when designing and implementing invasive species management programs.
Forest owners in Florida are often natural advocates of wildlife conservation. Unfortunately, some landowners choose to remain silent about imperiled species on their lands, which challenges ...government efforts to track species recovery. It is often assumed that landowner resistance towards wildlife regulations is economic in nature. However, when motivations for certain management behaviors are not economic in nature, the effectiveness of governmental regulations and incentives are not well understood. This paper is the first to investigate the economic and intrinsic motivations of family forest owners to protect imperiled wildlife species by defining landownership as a cultural ecosystem service, giving rise to personal identity benefits. We used a choice experiment format and Likert scale questions to characterize the personal identity constructs of family forest owners and their response to wildlife policies. We found many family forest owners are skeptical of government involvement, despite offers of a cost-share and a regulatory assurance. We conclude that when costs are low, or not well understood, forest owners' are more often motivated by the cultural values that uphold their personal identity constructs. Key in explaining changes in forest owner welfare was the importance placed on autonomy in making management decisions.
•Examines the economic and non-economic motivations of family forest owners•Classifies landownership and identity benefits as a cultural ecosystem service•Forest owners may have lexicographic preferences for stewardship identity benefits.•Policies should account for the cultural services provided by private lands.
We determine the economic revenues and optimal forest management of uneven-aged loblolly pine, longleaf pine, and slash pine forests considering timber and carbon benefits in the southeastern United ...States. Our results show that uneven-aged management of southern pines generates positive total revenues, with the exception of those stands managed with high residual basal areas and long cutting cycles. The uneven-aged management of pine forests is economically more attractive with loblolly pine stands than with longleaf pine or slash pine for all cutting cycles and residual basal areas; on average, loblolly pine returns $1389.60*ha.sup.-1 more than slash pine and $1500.70*ha.sup.-1 more than longleaf pine for all cutting cycles. For uneven-aged loblolly pine forests, our results suggest that landowners should experience highest profits with the shortest viable cutting cycle (10 years) and a medium-high residual basal area (11.5 m.sup.2*ha.sup.-1). For uneven-aged longleaf pine forests, landowners would be economically better off with a longer cutting cycle (20years) and a lower residual basal area (6.9 m.sup.2*ha.sup.-1). Notably, uneven-aged management of longleaf pine and slash pine for timber production becomes unprofitable with low-medium or high residual basal areas (9.2-11.5 m.sup.2*ha.sup.-1).
Water-based recreation areas provide many benefits to society and the ecosystem services they provide are increasingly being considered in land planning and conservation decisions. We examine the ...value of the Wekiva River in central Florida using a hedonic valuation model of residential property values. We analyze how structural characteristics of single-family homes and recreation area characteristics, such as fee systems, size of the area, and activities provided, impact property values. We find that publicly owned recreation areas with both land and water-based recreation activities increased property values within 5 miles of the Wekiva River. Proximity to recreation areas marginally increased housing values, and the size of the recreation areas and ecosystem type had no impact on property values. We recommend that recreation managers and land use planners focus efforts on conserving more publicly owned conservation lands that increase recreation access to residents to promote contiguous natural areas.
Longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) is a keystone tree species in the Coastal Plain of the southern United States. To reverse habitat loss and restore critically important forest ecosystem services ...in this region dominated by private landownership, longleaf pine’s economic performance must be addressed. Uneven-aged forest management has been suggested as a viable alternative for longleaf pine, but evidence of its economic performance under uneven-aged versus even-aged management is lacking. Here, we compare the economic viability of three competing longleaf pine management scenarios — thinned even-aged, unthinned even-aged (conservation and non-conservation land objectives), and uneven-aged — considering timber and nontimber benefits. We find that managing existing uneven-aged longleaf pine forests with a 10-year cutting cycle is economically preferred to even-aged management for land conservation ($1643.9·ha
−1
versus $1548.8 to $1641.6·ha
−1
). However, these estimates exclude costs associated with switching to uneven-aged management ($174.3 to $694.9
·
ha
−1
), which are considerable. Annual subsidies of between $5 and $22·ha
−1
for 50 years would be required to offset costs of conversion to uneven-aged management. For establishment of new longleaf pine stands, an uneven-aged scenario would be the economically preferred management approach, providing higher economic gains ($176.9·ha
−1
) than unthinned, high-density even-aged management when the primary objective is timber production.
Despite apparent efficiency concerns, the use of agricultural insurance as a policy tool has surged in rural China. Its use offers a natural experiment to assess both economic theory of property ...rights and agricultural policy effectiveness, and to revisit the rent dissipation model that was originally developed to explain the role of property rights in unsustainable fisheries harvest decisions. We focus on evidence of resource overpricing behavior in the context of subsidized agricultural insurance, including evidence of a theoretically-expected increasing rent pattern. Our results reinforce the importance of transactions costs as a driver of economic inefficiency and highlight the role of social costs as an important factor to explicitly consider when designing agricultural policy. In particular, when employing the formal policy mechanism of rural agricultural insurance, we suggest that informal risk-bearing arrangements can be leveraged to reduce social costs behind apparent overpricing behavior and increase land users’ welfare consistent with intended policy goals.
Demand for local food in the US has significantly increased over the past decade. In an attempt to understand the drivers of this demand and how they have changed over time, we investigate the ...literature on organic and local foods over the past few decades. We focus our review on studies that allow comparison of characteristics now associated with both local and organic food. We summarize the major findings of these studies and their implications for understanding drivers of local food demand. Prior to the late 1990s, most studies failed to consider factors now associated with local food, and the few that included these factors found very little support for them. In many cases, the lines between local and organic were blurred. Coincident with the development of federal organic food standards, studies began to find comparatively more support for local food as distinct and separate from organic food. Our review uncovers a distinct turn in the demand for local and organic food. Before the federal organic standards, organic food was linked to small farms, animal welfare, deep sustainability, community support and many other factors that are not associated with most organic foods today. Based on our review, we argue that demand for local food arose largely in response to corporate co-optation of the organic food market and the arrival of ‘organic lite’. This important shift in consumer preferences away from organic and toward local food has broad implications for the environment and society. If these patterns of consumer preferences prove to be sustainable, producers, activists and others should be aware of the implications that these trends have for the food system at large.
While the concept of environmental sustainability has steadily grown over the past thirty years, little progress has been made in unifying the efforts of the entities most involved: society, the ...environment, the economy, and governmental policy. This synthesis integrates across disciplines to outline the need for a harmonized sustainability model to align disparate environmental objectives. Specifically, this study highlights the disconnect between policy and capitalistic economies regarding environmental sustainability. We then provide a framework for an updated sustainability model and offer pathways toward an improved state of environmental sustainability. Notable contributions include the development of a dynamic, harmonized sustainability model derived from basic supply and demand curves that functions for both the consumption and disposal of resources at multiple scales.
Display omitted
•The role of policy is currently excluded from major sustainability frameworks.•Economic and political sustainability objectives remain disconnected.•We propose a harmonized sustainability framework that includes policy.•The proposed framework functions at multiple scales and includes waste.
Forest carbon offset programs have suffered from low landowner uptake, in large part to their long duration. A recent innovation in forest carbon offsets is the use of short period delays to harvest, ...which extend the rotation age of the stand beyond what is optimal for timber alone and increase sequestered carbon. Here, we assess the economic value of a short period delay “option pricing” in forest harvest with price uncertainty using a binomial option approach, accounting both for timber and carbon. Results from an option pricing model showed that landowners can generate considerably higher revenue with managerial flexibility along with the additional revenue from carbon offset programs. These results can help forest landowners make proper ownership decisions to withstand the risk and uncertainty associated with stumpage prices, while benefiting from carbon offset revenues.
PDF
