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1 – 10 of over 1000The purpose of this paper is to explore the state of extinction accounting, and the motivations for its use in the UK public sector. Prior studies are mostly concerned with…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the state of extinction accounting, and the motivations for its use in the UK public sector. Prior studies are mostly concerned with corporate attempts to account for species, despite studies in related areas calling for examinations of the public sector context.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper analyses the use of extinction accounting in three separate case organisations, conducting a total of 21 interviews across the three cases. Interviews were conducted with a range of organisational participants each having experience with extinction accounting.
Findings
Interviews reveal a number of common uses and applications of extinction accounting across the three councils. Practices are used to generate reports on species loss and recovery within each region, and to facilitate planning for species protection and recovery. However, in attempting to use this information, key trade-offs emerge between satisfying economic and ecological criteria, and even trade-offs are created regarding development of protection schemes. This leads to a subversion of extinction accounting.
Research limitations/implications
Commensurate with prior studies in the corporate context, the study finds the presence of an economic logic impinging upon ecological decision making, suggesting that practices of extinction accounting may be affected by the same acknowledged economic motivations that reside in corporate attempts to account for nature.
Originality/value
The paper makes an important contribution by evaluating the public sector context of extinction accounting, which is lacking in existing research. The findings relating to the public sector use of species and extinction information also provide a useful context to understand how relatively new social and environmental accounting practices are deployed in organisations, as well as some indication of their effectiveness and limitations.
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Nicholas P. Lovrich, Michael J. Gaffney, Edward P. Weber, R. Michael Bireley, Dayna R. Matthews and Bruce Bjork
We assessed attempts by federal and state agencies to utilize a Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving (COPPS) approach to address endangered species and natural resource…
Abstract
We assessed attempts by federal and state agencies to utilize a Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving (COPPS) approach to address endangered species and natural resource protection issues in two watersheds in Washington State involving listed species of salmon, steelhead and bull trout. In the wake of the listing of these species, NOAA Fisheries and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) joined to implement a multi-party collaboration to enforcement termed Resource-Oriented Enforcement (ROE). We sought to determine if federal and state resource agencies can collaborate effectively and if collaborative approaches can achieve short- and long-term resource protection goals. A citizen mail survey (n=800+ in each location) and extensive personal interviews with key actors were conducted to assemble evidence on the degree of success achieved in implementing ROE. Observed results suggest that collaboration can
To some persons, private gardens, public parks, and farms appear to offer a safe way to preserve all of the plants and animals the environment needs. To people who ignore the need…
Abstract
To some persons, private gardens, public parks, and farms appear to offer a safe way to preserve all of the plants and animals the environment needs. To people who ignore the need for conservation, the idea of paving and pruning and artificially laying out our land from coast to coast seems welcome. Wiser persons perceive that the destruction so imposed on nature would ultimately endanger our existence. The wilderness, with its wealth of animals and plants, holds a treasure from which we already extract the chemicals and genes we need for agricultural breeding, for industrial products, and for healing drugs. What to the layman may look like a disorderly swamp, or a dark forest, or an uninteresting prairie, actually encompasses complicated communities of vegetation and animals of all classes, communities that are held together in a stable balance by their interdependent components. Ecologists are identifying the key principles at work in these ecosystems of wetlands and drylands, forests and prairies. In their search for understanding of how life on our planet functions, they have called attention to the overriding need to preserve and protect the biological diversity that characterizes ecosystems. They have found instances in which short‐sighted human tampering has played havoc with subtle ecological balances. Too frequently entire species have vanished under man's onslaught. Sometimes such a disappearance is an indication that an entire ecosystem is out of balance.
This article examines the mandate reputation of the Endangered Species Act in its implementation context. Federal wildlife funding programs and laws are treated as messages to…
Abstract
This article examines the mandate reputation of the Endangered Species Act in its implementation context. Federal wildlife funding programs and laws are treated as messages to state wildlife agencies, and variety among state environmental conditions and agency management decisions shape the interpretation of federal messages. Innovations in planning for habitat protection in state, coastal zone, and county land use are treated as adaptations to the difficulties of conventional implementation. The Endangered Species Act's significance as a federal mandate is found to be questionable. The federal role as a regulator of endangered species protection is argued to be legitimate, but flexibility and collaboration with state and local interests in wildlife planning are also called for.
Louis P. Cain and Brooks A. Kaiser
At the beginning of the 20th century, three intertwined ambitions drove federal legislation over wildlife and biodiversity: establishment of multiple-use federal lands, the…
Abstract
At the beginning of the 20th century, three intertwined ambitions drove federal legislation over wildlife and biodiversity: establishment of multiple-use federal lands, the economic development of natural resources, and the maintenance of option values. We examine this federal intervention in natural resource use by analyzing roll call votes over the past century with a Random Utility Model (Manski, 1977) and conclude that economics mattered. So did ideology, but not uniformly. After World War II, the pro-environment vote which had been conservative shifted to being liberal. All these votes involved decisions regarding public land that reallocated the returns to users by changing the asset’s physical character or its usage rights. We suggest that long-term consequences affecting current resource allocations arose from disparities between broadly dispersed benefits and locally concentrated socioeconomic and geophysical (spatial) costs. We show that a primary intent of public land management has become to preserve multiple-use option values and identify important factors in computing those option values. We do this by demonstrating how the willingness to forego current benefits for future ones depends on the community’s resource endowments. These endowments are defined not only in terms of users’ current wealth accumulation but also from their expected ability to extract utility from natural resources over time.
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Madelon Willemsen, Julien Pollack and Chivonne Algeo
There are significant, ongoing threats of species extinction. Threatened species recovery programs are an important way of reducing this threat, but many recovery programs are…
Abstract
Purpose
There are significant, ongoing threats of species extinction. Threatened species recovery programs are an important way of reducing this threat, but many recovery programs are unsuccessful. The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues facing species recovery programs, and the potential benefits to be found in managing threatened species recovery from a project management perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
This research used the Grounded Theory Method to analyze the contents of four senate inquiries and 21 interviews with recovery experts. The Grounded Theory Method was then used to inductively develop concepts and theories that explain some of the issues faced in the delivery of recovery programs in Australia. These were explored from a project management perspective, to understand ways that project management could provide benefit to the recovery planning process.
Findings
Eight core challenges that have an impact on recovery emerged from the data. It was identified that there is a general lack of integration of project management into the recovery process. This was found to be particularly evident in terms of the recovery project lifecycle, risk management and stakeholder management. Strategies for addressing these issues are discussed.
Originality/value
Conservation scientists typically focus on technical recovery competencies. The authors argue that managing recovery from a project management perspective will increase recovery success rates through an increased focus on the contextual and behavioral competencies that are essential to the management and delivery of recovery projects and programs.
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Rebecca L. Gardner, Ellen Calhoun and Jeanne E. Boyle
In 1990 we compiled an annotated bibliography of official state lists of endangered, threatened, and rare species. In gathering information for that bibliography, which appeared…
Abstract
In 1990 we compiled an annotated bibliography of official state lists of endangered, threatened, and rare species. In gathering information for that bibliography, which appeared in Reference Services Review in Spring 1991, we found numerous unofficial sources of state lists, such as those developed by universities, institutes, and Natural Heritage Programs, which also provide valuable information on statuses of endangered, threatened, and rare species. A comprehensive search for unofficial lists results in this second bibliography.
Thomas Grigalunas, Simona Trandafrr, Meifeng Luo, James Opaluch and Suk-Jae Kwon
This paper analyzes two external costs often associated with port development, cost to fisheries from marine dredge disposal and damages from air pollution, using estimates of…
Abstract
This paper analyzes two external costs often associated with port development, cost to fisheries from marine dredge disposal and damages from air pollution, using estimates of development and operation for a proposed (but since cancelled) container port as a case study. For dredge disposal, a bio-economic model was used to assess short- and long-term and indirect (joodweb) damages to fisheries from marine disposal of clean sediments. In the case of air pollution, estimates of annual activity levels and emission coefficients are used to estimate incremental annual emissions of three key pollutants (NOx, HC and CO) for trucks, trains, yard vehicles, and vessels. These estimates allow for phasing in of strict new air pollution regulations. For both external costs, sensitivity analyses are used to reflect uncertainty. Estimates of shadow values in year 2002 dollars amount from $0.094 per cubic yard to $0.169 per cubic yard of clean dredged material for the selected disposal site and from $0.0584 per mile (jor current control standards) to $ 0. 0023 per mile (after phasing in of new regulations) for air pollution from heavy trucks.
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Azaiez Ouled Belgacem, Farah Ben Salem, Mouldi Gamoun, Roukaya Chibani and Mounir Louhaichi
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the benefits of reintroducing traditional grazing systems practices for improving arid rangelands. Grazing is the most extensive land…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the benefits of reintroducing traditional grazing systems practices for improving arid rangelands. Grazing is the most extensive land use in southern Tunisia, but the rangelands have suffered many decades of severe degradation due to profound socioeconomic changes and the emergence of an agro-pastoral society in place of the former pastoral one. Traditional grazing systems (gdel and herd mobility), which had historically allowed for grazing deferment and control of grazing livestock were abandoned. Yet grazing management strategies are important tools to sustain integrated livestock rangeland production systems in dry areas in the face of ongoing climate change and human pressure.
Design/methodology/approach
This study assesses the revival of traditional best practices of rangeland resting in a representative community. Total plant cover, species composition, flora richness and range production were determined in six rangeland sites subjected respectively to one, two and three years of rest; one and two years of light grazing after rest; and free grazing (control).
Findings
Results showed that dry rangelands keep their resilience to the negative effects of climate change once human pressure is controlled. A maximum of two years of rest is enough to sustainably manage the rangelands in southern Tunisia, as this protection showed considerable and positive effects on the parameters scored.
Originality/value
The revival of the traditional best practices under new arrangements adapted to current biophysical and socioeconomic conditions would be an excellent tool to mitigate the negative effects of frequent droughts and reduce the animal feed costs that poor farmers face.
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