After the gray wolf was delisted as endangered and hunters brought a lawsuit, the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources allowed a wolf hunt in Wisconsin in February—the first since 2014. Its impact is still reverberating, says Field & Stream. The hunt was called off after three days (it was supposed to extend a week) because…
Tag: Endangered Species
What Do Free Market Environmentalists Support?
This is a guest post by Shawn Regan, vice president of research at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, Montana. He is also the executive editor of PERC Reports. By Shawn Regan Free market environmentalism used to involve academic study showing ways that private property rights can protect the environment, often when the government…
NPR Attacks David Legates. Heartland Issues Point-by-Point Rebuttal
Whatever one’s views about climate change, nothing can justify National Public Radio’s recent brutal and uninformed attack on David Legates, a professor at the University of Delaware and former Delaware state climatologist. Legates has just been appointed to a high position at NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and that was enough to bring…
The Pandemic and Trophy Hunting
Fear that the coronavirus pandemic came from wild animals has evoked calls for greater limits on trade in wildlife. But Catherine Semcer of PERC (the Property and Environment Research Center), in a thorough discussion of the issue, says that the coronavirus did not come from legal trade in wildlife and warns against further restricting trophy…
The Breached Michigan Dam Was Supposed to Save Mussels?
Thirteen years of regulatory oversight? From the Detroit News: Numerous violations and longstanding concerns that the Edenville Dam could not withstand a significant flood led the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to revoke its license for power generation in September 2018. *** “Thirteen years after acquiring the license for the project, the licensee has still…
How I Became a Free-Market Environmentalist in France
By Max Falque The managing director of ICREI, the International Center for Research on Environmental Issues, Max Falque is based in Aix-en-Provence, France. He tells the story of how he changed from a French bureaucrat to a proponent of environmental protection using private property and markets. From his essay, “Why Did I Become a Free-Market…
The War against Poachers
The International Ranger Federation reports that 269 rangers were killed across Africa between 2012 and 2018, the majority of them by poachers….
[R]esearch on organized crime estimates that between 150 and 200 poachers were killed in the Kruger National Park alone [between 2010 and 2015]. In neighboring Botswana, anti-poaching action has reportedly resulted in dozens of deaths, and the country’s controversial “shoot to kill” policy—which gives rangers powers to shoot poachers dead on sight—has drawn allegations of abuse.