Suchergebnisse

Endangered Florida panthers live and breed on state and federal lands in south Florida, but they are a wide-ranging species, and the habitat available to them on public lands is not enough for them to thrive and recover. The 2008 Panther Recovery Plan by the US Fish and Wildlife Service requires that habitat for the panther be conserved on both public and private lands throughout the state. Private rangelands in southwest and south central Florida provide important habitat and prey for the Florida panther. These lands also play a key role in conserving other native species like gopher tortoises, bob white quail, turkeys, deer, vultures, scrub jays, cranes, black bears, and bobcats. Unfortunately, these rangelands are under increasing development pressure as the human population in Florida continues to grow. Multiple policy approaches have been put in place by local, state, and federal governments to address habitat loss and secure natural resources in Florida for our panthers. This 5-page fact sheet written by Elizabeth F. Pienaar and Melissa M. Kreye and published by the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation provides a brief overview of existing regulatory and voluntary approaches to help conserve the Florida panther on private lands. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw413

AbstractTo improve wildlife conservation incentives in community-based natural resource management programs, a better understanding of rural communities' willingness to engage in wildlife conservation jobs is needed. We implement a discrete choice model explaining reservation wages for nine conservation jobs using contingent behavior data from rural Botswana residents. We present a model in which the conditional indirect utility function incorporates a more general value of time than has previously been used, and this specification outperforms the standard model. Sample estimates indicate that reservation wages are modestly higher for women than for men, and that residents have higher reservation wages for jobs requiring more exertion or involving more danger.

Presented at the 9th international wildlife ranching symposium: wildlife - the key to prosperity for rural communities, held on 12-16 September 2016 at Hotel Safari & the Safari Court, Windhoek, Namibia. ; Landowner resistance to Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulations is a key challenge to endangered species protection and recovery. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) strategies have been promoted as an effective market-based strategy for conserving imperiled species and offsetting ESA regulatory pressure on private landowners. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recently proposed that a mix of PES and regulatory assurances be implemented in Florida to encourage cattlemen to engage in Florida panther recovery efforts. To identify cattlemen's preferences for the proposed programs we conducted a mail-based survey employing a choice experiment typically used in marketing research (i.e., best-worst scaling). We found that the utility associated with an incentive program depends on both the type and level of incentive offered and contract features that impact personal autonomy. Our findings suggest that voluntary conservation programs are most likely to enroll politically conservative landowners if these programs (1) provide per-acre payments or tax reductions, (2) are of shorter duration, (3) are based on norms of reciprocity, and (4) do not require overly intrusive or restrictive levels of monitoring to ensure program compliance.