Species Distributions, Land Values, and Efficient Conservation
Amy Ando,
Jeffrey Camm,
Stephen Polasky,
Andrew Solow
*
Efforts at species conservation in the United States have tended to
be opportunistic and uncoordinated. Recently, however, ecologists and
economists have begun to develop more systematic approaches. Here, the
problem of efficiently allocating scarce conservation resources in the
selection of sites for biological reserves is addressed. With the use
of county-level data on land prices and the incidence of endangered
species, it is shown that accounting for heterogeneity in land prices
results in a substantial increase in efficiency in terms of either the
cost of achieving a fixed coverage of species or the coverage attained
from a fixed budget.
A. Ando, Resources for the Future, 1616 P Street, NW, Washington,
DC 20036, USA.
J. Camm, Department of Quantitative Analysis and Operations Management,
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA.
S. Polasky, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Oregon
State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.
A. Solow, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
asolow{at}whoi.edu
