Read the case study on page 27 “Protecting Endangered Species with Private Property Rights.” Write an essay 1,000-1,250 words, answering the following questions:
- Economists argue that scarcity is different than poverty. To understand why many wild animals are scarce we need to look at scarcity in the context of private property. Explain how scarcity is affected by private property rights in the case study.
- Compare and contrast how incentives accompanying private property rights can both help protect and endanger the rhino, an endangered species.
Be sure to cite at least three relevant scholarly sources in support of your content. These sources can include trade journals and think tank reports.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
Case study
Have you ever wondered
why the wild tiger is endangered
in much of the
world but most cats are
thriving? Or why spotted
owls are threatened in
the Pacific Northwest but
chickens are not? Why
have elephant and rhinoceros
populations declined
in number but not cattle
or hogs? The incentives accompanying private ownership provide
the answer.
To understand why many wild animals are scarce, consider
what happens with animals that provide food, most of which are
privately owned. Suppose that people decided to eat less beef.
Beef prices would fall, and the incentive for individuals to dedicate
land and other resources to raise cattle would decline. The
result would be fewer cows. The market demand for beef creates
the incentive for suppliers to maintain herds of cattle and to protect
them under a system of private ownership.
In some ways, the rhinoceros is similar to a cow. A rhino,
like a large bull in a cattle herd, may charge if disturbed. At
3,000 pounds, a charging rhino can be very dangerous to humans.
Also like cattle, rhinos can be valuable to people—a
single horn from a black rhino, used for artistic carvings and
medicines, can sell for up to $30,000. But when hunting rhinos
and selling their horns is illegal, rhinos become a favorite
target of poachers—people who hunt illegally. Poachers are
sometimes even assisted by local people eager to see fewer
rhinos present because rhinos make life risky for humans and
they also compete for food and water.
However, rhinos are very different from cattle in one
important respect: in most of Africa where they naturally
range, private ownership of the rhino is prohibited. Since
1977, many nations have outlawed rhino hunting and forbidden
the sale of rhino parts. But this approach has only made
things worse for the rhino: between 1970 and 1994, the number
of black rhinos declined by 95%.1 According to South
African economist Michael ’t Sas-Rolfes, the trade ban “has
not had a discernible effect on rhino numbers and does not
seem to have stopped the trade in rhino horn. If anything,
the . . . listings led to a sharp increase in the black market
price of rhino horn, which simply fuelled further poaching
and encouraged speculative stockpiling of horn.”
But what if the powerful incentives created by private
ownership were instead brought to bear on the rhino? That actually
happened for a while in Zimbabwe. Landowners were
allowed to fence and manage game animals on their property.
Because they could profit from protecting the big animals,
some ranchers shifted their operations from producing cattle to
wildlife protection, ecotourism, and hunting, often in cooperation
with neighboring landowners. Under these rules, the black
rhino population climbed dramatically. And because ranchers
were allowed to cooperate and combine operations, they could
reduce fencing between ranches and manage the larger preserves
as a unit, better helping not only rhinos but other valued
wildlife as well.
Indeed, several parts of southern Africa have a tradition,
extending back to the 1960s, of allowing ownership of wildlife.
Namibia, for example, gave those rights to private landholders
in the 1960s and extended them to communal lands in the
mid-1990s. With this policy change, tribal communities began
to hold ownership rights over the wildlife in their communal
areas and were able to keep all revenues from wildlife. This
transformed the incentives in Namibia. By 2007, Namibian
communities were receiving $4.3 million from wildlife, says
Fred Nelson, a wildlife expert who spent 11 years in Africa developing
wildlife management partnerships. The revenues come
primarily from trophy hunting and tourism ventures—important
new opportunities in semi-arid areas where income-earning options
are limited.2
To ensure that trophy hunting of elephants, lions, and other
animals would be profitable, local communities had to protect
the animals and their habitat. These new incentives have led to
a natural resurgence in wildlife numbers—lions are returning
to areas where they had been overhunted—as well as deliberate
restocking of wildlife. Even the number of black rhinos in
Namibia has risen from 707 in 1997, to 1,134 in 2004.
Citing the 40 years of progress in Namibia, first by
giving private ranchers rights to wildlife on their property
and then extending them to tribal communities, Nelson
told an interviewer in 2013, “This is an extraordinary
achievement due to a very iconoclastic approach to conservation.”
3 Clearly, property rights to ownership or use
are one key to conservation.
1See Michael De Alessi, Private Conservation and Black Rhinos in
Zimbabwe: The Savé Valley and Bubiana Conservancies, available online at
www.cei.org/gencon/025,01687.cfm.
2Fred Nelson, “Conservation Can Work: Southern Africa Shows Its Neighbours
How,” Swara (East African Wildlife Society) 32, no. 2 (2009): 36–37.
3Interview with Fred Nelson, found on March 14, 2013, at www.iucn.org/
about/union/commissions/sustainable_use_and_livelihoods_specialist_
group/sulinews/issue_2/sn2_frednelson.cfm
protecting endangered Species with private-property rights
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