Writing for PERC, R. David Simpson gives an intriguing example of salmon preservation: Native American tribes in Oregon considered bidding on a dam license (to change its operations in ways that would protect salmon). The result: a productive relationship with the dam owners—a cooperative effort to protect salmon. Here is an excerpt from Simpson’s paper:…
Search Results for: property rights
How to Reduce Deforestation in Brazil? Establish Property Rights
By Jane Shaw Stroup In a classic illustration of the way that property rights can protect the environment, Brazil is attempting to establish property rights for squatters who have been cutting down trees in the Amazon in order to create pastureland for cattle. The Wall Street Journal just published a comprehensive overview of this plan…
Holly Fretwell
Director of outreach and a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). For two decades, her research has focused on public lands policy and property rights. As an outdoor enthusiast, Fretwell strives to enhance conservation through cooperation and entrepreneurship.
The Secret of Environmental Protection
Yes, data from the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World Index send a resounding message: Economic freedom brings about environmental protection. Why? Because economic freedom leads to prosperity and only prosperous countries can truly protect their environment. Are you skeptical? As the graph above shows,…
Planners Want Control over Sugarloaf Mountain, Maryland, a Privately Owned Preserve
No good deed goes unpunished. That adage might be applied to Gordon Strong’s 1954 donation of Maryland’s Sugarloaf Mountain as a preserve for public use, while remaining in private hands. Stronghold, Inc., a nonprofit organization, owns most of the mountain and, until recently, intended to keep it open for public use (as it has been…
The Dangerous Turn to Conservation Syndicates
For 30 years, I was an appraiser and a frequent expert witness on the value of property. Sometimes government agencies would condemn property under eminent domain, and I would estimate what the agency should pay the owner; at other times, I estimated the value of land or easements given to a conservation group such as…