Oct 31, 2022 at 05:00pm
subsidized water projects have exacted a heavy toll on fish and wildlife.Dams built along the Columbia River and its tributaries, for example, have effectively blocked fish migrations and inundated spawning areas.As a result, anadromous fisheries in the Pacific Northwest are declining and, in some cases, are on the verge of extinction.As a result of federal water projects, wild salmon runs in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and northern California now number in the thousands and hundreds, where once they were in the millions.The first population to be officially protected as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act was the Sacramento River chinook.After fish ladders were built to allow salmon and steelhead to negotiate dams, fish biologists discovered that young fish had trouble finding their way through the reservoirs behind the dams without the current to guide them.Hence, reservoir levels are being drawn down to provide more current, but this reduces water availability for agriculture and recreation.Alternatively, fish are trucked around or barged through reservoirs at enormous cost.In the end, these measures may cost more than $900 per salmon saved.These examples are ugly because they represent a senseless destruction of natural amenities fostered by our political institutions.Going for the GoodIn the 1930s, Aldo Leopold became the American conservation movement’s ’voice in the wilderness’ because he was one of the few who understood the importance of environmental entrepreneurship.Unlike so many in the movement who were putting all their eggs in the public stewardship basket, Leopold began espousing the need to balance wildlife policy by enlisting the services of the private landowner.He recognized that the private landowner was critical to the recovery of wildlife populations and that in conservation as in business, incentives really do matter.He knew that farmers and ranchers had to survive financially and urged that we create an institutional environment favorable to private stewardship.6Regardless of the resource in question, the key to entrepreneurship is secure private property rights coupled with the freedom to contract.Bourland had to specify what International Paper was supplying to hunters and recreational users and what was expected from them in return.He had to discover the price people were willing to pay and work with timber managers to supply the environmental amenities.Willey had to specify what he wanted from water users and what he was willing to supply in return.Because he was not marketing the water directly to those who demand salmon and steelhead habitat, he had to discover a secondary market in electric power production that allowed him to muster the financial resources to compensate farmers for forgone water use.In both Bourland’s and Willey’s cases, the contract had to be monitored to ensure that the goods were delivered.It is one
