Endangered Species Privatized

Endangered species should be protected by law. Economic truth, however, is that they

are best protected by making them private property. Owners of elephants, exactly as owners of cattle, have a self-interest to propagate rather than simply preserve their property. Propagation increases supply, which decreases price, which causes demand to increase, which causes an increase in funds for animal conservation. Economic truth is that bans restrict supply, which causes price to increase, which causes criminal activity to increase.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) claims that it is saving species from extinction, but one economic truth is that this act causes landowners to clear their land of all endangered species before the ESA finds out that the species are there and forbids the land to be used, thereby reducing the value of the land (sometimes to zero).

In reality, the ESA did not save the kangaroo, the whale, or the alligator. Whaling was forbidden before the 1973 Act, and alligators were found to be far more abundant than was thought. Similarly, since 1972, Project Tiger, a conservation project backed by the World Wildlife Fund, has had zero effect. The tiger is as close to extinction as before the project. Why? The price of a tiger is zero. Millions of dollars were spent to protect it and prohibit trade. A person in India whose average wage is $620 a year cannot be prevented from trying to earn $60 from poaching (nor can the poacher’s employer be prevented from trying to earn $47,000 per tiger on the world market).

The liberal environmentalist argument against growing and then selling tigers rather than just protecting them is that, in themselves, wild species, as well as such things as health care and primary education, are not commerce. They have social and cultural ramifications. But that argument is precisely why the price of health care is above market price, and why public schools’ test scores are at a historic low: they are not treated as commodities subject to market price. The liberal argument against conservatives is “You understand the price of everything but the value of nothing.” Sorry, price and value are correlatives. If you price something at $0 (the tiger), you send a signal to the market that it has no value. Similarly, government subsidies to fishing fleets reduce the cost of fishing endangered deep-sea fish. If fleet enlargements were not subsidized (fuel is expensive for distant deepwater fishing), the price of deepwater fish would skyrocket and that would end the exploitation. The solution is property rights to ocean fishing. That would encourage farming of endangered species—their multiplication rather than their extinction.

The farming of tigers and deep-sea fish are two examples of free-market environmentalism. The wolf is another example. In Montana, they were reintroduced yet opposed by ranchers who worried about the effect of “new” predators on their sheep and cattle. Free-market environmentalism suggests that those who want the wolves back should pay for it, should compensate ranchers every time an animal is taken. That would create a property right to the wolves to satisfy the environmentalists, and it would eliminate the need for ranchers to kill a wolf every time they saw one.

The environmental group Defenders of Wildlife agreed. The group established a Wolf Compensation Fund, literally an economic force to make it possible to live with wolves. In 2007, the fund paid out $231,597 for attacks on 224 cattle and 309 sheep. The fund has since paid out almost $1 million in compensation over its 20 years of existence. It is completely funded by private donors.

This is a rare example, however. For the most part, the liberal environmental establishment is wedded to the punishment of businesses, landowners, and taxpayers for their role in harming the environment. Hewing to liberal dogma that markets are exploitative, environmentalists want taxes and regulation. Rather than spend their money on conservation, as the Wolf Compensation Fund did, they spend it on lobbyists in Washington or state capitals. As liberal economist Thomas Michael Power and Sierra magazine’s associate editor Paul Rauber put it,

Markets are not neutral, technological devices. They are social institutions whose use has profound consequences. All societies purposely limit the extent of the market in order to protect basic values.

The statement perfectly opposes what this author believes. How does it reconcile the importance Bill Clinton placed on developing a “market-based environmental-protection strategy,” noting that Adam Smith’s invisible hand can have a green thumb? Paradoxically, liberal environmentalists must recognize that the free market is a basic value for Americans. How can they not when so many Americans believe the free market is absolutely the most efficient system for both the production and allocation of resources.

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