The Role of Private Landowners in Endangered Species Conservation and Recovery

My research began with an extensive literature review on the history and content of the Endangered Species Act, with particular attention to the mechanisms in place to offset the impact of the Act on private landowners, and incentivize them to comply with the Act and encourage practices that supports species. I also examined TESF reports on various recovery projects, especially the report on the Desert Big Horn Sheep. The manager at the Armendaris Ranch was kind enough to share preliminary numbers on TESF’s investment in the project, and the revenue generated through hunts since. From here I expanded my search for other potential instances where recovery projects involving private landowners were producing monetary results. This proved exceedingly difficult. The most comparable case was in Oregon, where the efforts of a single county, including outfitter businesses, led to the delisting of the Columbia Whitetail Deer. Some of the outfitting businesses owned land that they intentionally managed to support the deer’s preferred habitat. Their actions contributed to their ability to sell hunting tags. However, because this was the only reasonably solid case I could find, my supervisor at TESF, Mike Phillips, and I discussed the possibility of what we referred to as ‘the magical ungulate formula’. In other words, the feasibility of the idea of private landowners potentially making money—or at least breaking even—from their investment in a recovery project was made possible by the fact that the recovered species could be hunted. Hunting can generate a high price for a single animal, essentially getting you the best return for your investment. Although there is potential in other industries, like wildlife watching, fur, or pharmaceuticals, it does not appear that any such case with substantial documentation exists yet. During this time I also had semi-structured conversations with several employees at Turner Enterprises, Inc. (TEI) and TESF regarding their thoughts on the TESF recovery projects, how TESF’s goals fit into the larger goals of TEI, and what each employee thought about the concept of combining business with endangered species recovery. I also continued to search for landowners and outfitters who took part in endangered species conservation projects. Instances of landowners intentionally providing land are rare, and cases where the landowners have directly financially benefitted—and those benefits were well documented—were virtually nonexistent. Work continued in Chapel Hill by expanding my research to include the social implications of private landowners becoming more involved in endangered species recovery. This research took the form of a wider literature review on the history of wildlife in America, and the implications of privatizing ‘wildness.’ This was greatly aided by the class AMST 201: Approaches to American Studies, which focused on ‘the question of the animal.’ A study of particular noteworthiness is Shogren and Hayward’s “Biological Effectiveness and Economic Impacts of the Endangered Species Act.” Shogren and Hayward’s identification of the public nature of wildlife launched my argument for considering not only the economic potential of private landowners’ participation in recovery programs, but the privatization implications that accompany this potential.Bachelor of Art