Where Markets Meet the Environment PERC REPORTS · herd is much larger than the Central Arctic...

502 South 19th Avenue, Suite 211, Bozeman, Montana 59718502 South 19th Avenue, Suite 211, Bozeman, Montana 59718

PERC REPORTSWhere Markets Meet the Environment

Volume 19 Number 2 June 2001 502 South 19th Avenue, Suite 211, Bozeman, Montana 59718

6

TAKING ON THECOMMONS

Local control preservesMaine lobster fishing.

byAlan Ehrenhalt

THE LEGACY OFTHE DDT BAN

Malaria makes acomeback.

byRoger E. Meinersand Andrew P. Morriss

ANTIQUE APPLES:A MARKET TASTE?

Does commercial activitydestroy diversity?

byJane S. Shaw

THE CARIBOU

QUESTION

3by Deborah Jacobs

128

Copyright © 2001 by PERC.ISSN 1095-3779

PERC Reports 2 June 2001

EXECUTIVE DIRECTORTerry L. Anderson

SENIOR ASSOCIATESDaniel K. BenjaminDavid D. HaddockP. J. HillDonald R. LealRoger E. MeinersAndrew P. MorrissJane S. ShawRandy T. SimmonsRichard L. StroupBruce Yandle

ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTORAND TREASURERMonica Lane Guenther

DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR

Eric C. Noyes

ENVIRONMENTALEDUCATION DIRECTORDonald R. Wentworth

EDITORIAL ASSOCIATELinda E. Platts

RESEARCH ASSOCIATESMatthew BrownHolly L. FretwellJ. Bishop GrewellClay J. LandryDominic Parker

CONFERENCE COORDINATORColleen Lane

COMPUTER OPERATIONSMichelle L. L. JohnsonDianna L. RienhartSheila J. Spain

BOARD OF DIRECTORSJohn TomlinChairmanThe Vista Group

David W. BradyStanford University

Thomas J. BrayThe Detroit News

Jean A. BriggsForbes

David G. CameronDana Ranch Co., Inc.

William A. DunnDunn Capital Management, Inc.

Eugene Graf IIILand Developer

Joseph N. IgnatBlackburn Consultants, LLC

Dwight E. LeeUpland Associates, LP

Adam MeyersonThe Heritage Foundation

Neil OldridgeAssociated Business Consultants

Jerry PerkinsKarst Stage, Inc.

Hardy ReddCharles Redd Foundation

Vernon L. SmithUniversity of Arizona

EDITORJane S. Shaw

ASSOCIATE EDITORLinda E. Platts

PRODUCTION MANAGERDianna L. Rienhart

ARTISTJames Lindquist

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

GREENER PASTURES

10

Farmers sellwind rights;

investor preservesendangered marmots.

PUBLIC LANDS

Federal policiesmove toward

hands-offmanagement.

14

TANGENTS

Daniel Benjaminexplores Arcticexpeditions in

the 19th century.

16

PERC REPORTS

BOZEMAN, MONTANA 59718-6827FAX: [email protected]

502 SOUTH 19TH AVENUE, STE 211PHONE: 406-587-9591

WWW.PERC.ORG

PERC— THE CENTER FOR FREE MARKET ENVIRONMENTALISM —


FOOTPRINTS IN THE REFUGE

THE CARIBOUAND ALASKAN OIL

By Deborah Jacobs

s politicians debate oil ex-ploration in the Arctic

National Wildlife Refuge(ANWR), public attention hasturned to the caribou. Due totheir large numbers, lengthy mi-grations, and importance to tra-ditional Alaskan cultures, theseruminants are probably the mostprominent animal species onthe North Slope of Alaska.

Opponents of oil explora-tion often evoke the image ofmigrating herds of caribou. Onits Web site, the NationalAudubon Society (2001) warnsthat “no suitable alternativehabitat exists for the PorcupineCaribou Herd if they are drivenfrom their calving grounds byoil development.” It even saysthat the Department of the Interior predicts that oildevelopment will “contribute to” a 20 to 40 percentdecline in the caribou population, although it doesnot give a source for this claim.

Oil exploration since 1968 around Prudhoe Bayon the North Slope does not seem to have negativelyaffected the Central Arctic caribou herd. And thereis little evidence that the Porcupine herd, which jour-neys through the area proposed for oil drilling inANWR, will suffer harm.

Nestled in Alaska’s northeast corner, ANWRcovers 19.6 million acres of the state’s 365 millionacres. In 1980, Congress divided the refuge into threeparts: 8 million acres of wilderness, 10 million acres ofwildlife refuge that would remain off limits to oil drill-ing, and 1.5 million acres, known as section 1002,which can be explored for oil if Congress approves.Section 1002 represents only 8 percent of the total

refuge, and less than 4 percentof Alaska’s total coastal plainand foothills zone (U.S. Fishand Wildlife Service 2001).

In many years, the Porcu-pine herd of 130,000 cariboumigrates through section 1002,where cows give birth to theircalves. Opponents of oil devel-opment in ANWR contendthat exploration and develop-ment threaten the herd. Theypoint to evidence that some in-dividual caribou in the CentralArctic herd have been harmedand contend that the Porcu-pine is more vulnerable becauseit is a much larger herd affect-ing a smaller area.

The Central Arctic herdmigrates annually from the

foothills of the Brooks Range, where it spends the falland winter, north to the Beaufort Sea coast in thespring and summer. It inhabits the Prudhoe Bay oilfield during summer and early fall as cows calve andsuckle their young (Maki 1992, 1702).

n terms of overall health, the Central Arctic herdhas prospered (Cronin et al. 1998; Maki 1992; Pol-

lard et al. 1996). In 1972, according to the Alaska De-partment of Fish and Game, the herd numbered 3,000animals. Since then it has increased to between25,000 and 27,000 (Maki 1992, 1703). The cariboupopulation fluctuates naturally, reflecting factors suchas predation, parasites, habitat condition, hunting,and weather (Cronin et al. 1998, 201).

Several studies conclude, however, that the oilfacilities have displaced some Central Arctic caribou,especially females (Nelleman and Cameron 1996;

A

I

In terms of overall health, the Central

Arctic herd of caribou has prospered.


CARIBOU

Whitten and Cameron 1983; Whitten et al. 1992). In1996 Nellemann and Cameron concluded that the oilfacilities have displaced many maternal females from azone within 4 km of development structures. They alsofound that the number of males and females in the areasurrounding the infrastructure declined by 52 percent,with a 43 percent increase in use of terrain that was 4–10 km from surface development (Nellemann andCameron 1996, 23). Thus, they suggest that the cari-bou are staying awayfrom the surface devel-opment, and this maylead them to overeat thevegetation further away,possibly leading to a re-duction in nutrients.

Another hypoth-esis is that oil field de-velopments impede thefemales’ typical east-west movement duringlate summer. TheAlaska Department ofFish and Game studiedcaribou movementsfrom 1975–1978 in thePrudhoe Bay region.Individual caribouwere collared and theirmovements tracked.The study found ahigher percentage ofbulls near the road sys-tem. Away from theroads there was no significant difference in the per-centages of bull and cow sightings. From this the re-searchers concluded that cows avoid the oil-relatedfacilities (Whitten and Cameron 1983, 145).

However, the authors acknowledge that “thiscomparison may be misleading, since cows apparentlyretained collars longer than did bulls” (144). With adisproportionately larger total number of cowssighted, the number of cows near the developmentrepresents a smaller percentage than the percentage ofbulls nearby. If the females do avoid certain structures,it has had no measurable impact on the herd.

Challenging the claim of individual displace-ment is the well-documented fact that during theherd’s summer migration route the caribou walk un-der pipelines, which are five feet above ground—“to

S

spare the animals a limbo-bar maneuver” (Newsweek2000). Aerial studies of the Prudhoe Bay oil fieldshave shown many caribou on and around surfacestructures (Cronin et al. 1998, 197). Noel et al.(1998, 408) observed that “even when disturbed bymoving vehicles, caribou most commonly just moveto another location on the pad rather than leavingthe pad.”

The oil fields help relieve the caribou from in-sects that harass them. Studies have shown thatgravel pads and roadbeds keep some insects away. In

the absence of these sur-faces, the caribou moveto the coast, using en-ergy in the process andmoving farther awayfrom their inland graz-ing grounds (Pollard etal. 1996, 649).

The Porcupineherd is much larger thanthe Central Arctic herd.Section 1002 is one-fifththe size of the CentralArctic herd’s calvinggrounds but is used by sixtimes as many animals(U.S. Fish and WildlifeService 2001). The cari-bou roam throughANWR during a 930-mile yearly migrationthat stretches acrossAlaska and Canada.They visit section 1002for only two months,

similar to the time spent by the Central Arctic herdat Prudhoe Bay.

ome argue that if maternal females are displaced,suitable alternative habitat might not be available

(Urquhart 2001). Scientists at the University ofAlaska at Fairbanks say that caribou cows and calvesare sensitive to human disturbances. Thus, oil devel-opment could disrupt calving patterns and decreasethe number of surviving young (Pearce 2000).

Other evidence casts doubt on this view. TheU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been investigatingthe impacts of potential oil development on wildlifein section 1002 for the past fifteen years. Fish andWildlife officials point out that the herd roams overa vast expanse of territory, and calving has historically

Source: Alaska Department of Natural Resources

WHERE CARIBOU ROAM


occurred over a fairly large area of the North Slopeand the Yukon Territory (Urquhart 2001).

Even if oil development could disrupt the mi-gration of females, improvements in technology inthe last thirty years make the surface footprint of thefacilities very small. The facilities at Prudhoe Baycover 5,000 acres, or 2 percent of the oil field surfacearea. The 1.5 million acres of section 1002 can beexplored and developed on less than 2,000 acres, or0.14 percent of the section (Arctic Power 2001).Joseph Hegna of ARCO Alaska states: “We can ex-plore without leaving footprints. And the footprintrequired for new developments is a tenth of what itonce was” (quoted in Revkin 2001).

Improved three-dimensional underground sur-vey technology and directional drilling allow formore precise, efficient, and far-reaching discoveryand extraction of oil and gas reserves. Surface re-serve pits, the core of environmental damage in thepast, can now be eliminated through the use ofwaste re-injection. New ice chip roads will melt inthe summer, when caribou inhabit the area. Pipe-lines will be elevated, as at Prudhoe Bay, and punc-tuated by elbows to allow for caribou movementaround the field and to reduce accidental oil spills(Revkin 2001).

Companies know more about caribou manage-ment, too. They can limit exploration to the nine toten months of the year when the caribou are hun-dreds of miles away.

The weight of evidence suggests that the oil fa-cilities built in the late 1960s have not visiblyharmed the caribou that migrate through thePrudhoe Bay area. While there are speculative rea-sons to be concerned about the larger herd of cari-bou migrating in ANWR, the evidence of likelyharm is weak.

Arctic Power. 2001. ANWR Information Brief: Tech-nology. February. Available: www.anwr.org. CitedMay 7, 2001.

Cronin, Matthew A., Warren B. Ballard, James D.Bryan, Barbara J. Pierson, and Jay D.McKendrick. 1998. Northern Alaska Oil Fieldsand Caribou: A Commentary. Biological Conser-vation 83(2): 195–208.

Maki, Alan. 1992. Of Measured Risks: The Environ-mental Impacts of the Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, OilField. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 11:1691–706.

National Audubon Society. 2001. Protect the Arcticfrom Oil Drilling. Available: www.protectthearctic.com/history.asp. Cited May 7, 2001.

Nellemann, Christian, and Raymond Cameron.1996. Effects of Petroleum Development onTerrain Preferences of Calving Caribou. Arctic49(1): 23–28.

Newsweek. 2000. An Arctic Battlefield: Billions ofBarrels of Oil Lie beneath a Pristine WildlifeRefuge. July 10, 46.

Noel, Lynn E., Robert H. Pollard, Warren B. Ballard,and Matthew A. Cronin. 1998. Activity andUse of Active Gravel Pads and Tundra by Cari-bou within the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field. CanadianField-Naturalist 112(3): 400–409.

Pearce, Fred. 2000. Sink or Swim. New Scientist167(2250): 16.

Pollard, Robert H., Warren B. Ballard, Lynn E. Noel,and Matthew A. Cronin. 1996. Parasitic InsectAbundance and Microclimate of Gravel Padsand Tundra within the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field,Alaska, in Relation to Use by Caribou, Rangifertarandus granti. Canadian Field-Naturalist 110(4):649–58.

Revkin, Andrew C. 2001. Hunting for Oil: NewPrecision, Less Pollution. New York Times,January 30.

Urquhart, Doug. 2001. Oil Development and CaribouScience: The Porcupine Caribou Range inAlaska’s National Wildlife Refuge. Available:arcticcircle.uconn.edu/ArcticCircle/ANWR/anwrcaribouscience.html. Cited May 7, 2001.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2001. Potential Im-pacts of Proposed Oil and Gas Development on theArctic Refuge’s Coastal Plain: Historical Overviewand Issues of Concern. January 17, 2001. Avail-able: arctic.fws.gov/issues1.html. Cited May 7,2001.

Whitten, Kenneth, and Raymond Cameron. 1983.Movements of Collared Caribou in Relationto Petroleum Development on the ArcticSlope of Alaska. Canadian Field-Naturalist97(3): 143–45.

Whitten, Kenneth R., Gerald W. Garner, Francis J.Mauer, and Richard B. Harris. 1992. Productiv-ity and Early Calf Survival in The PorcupineCaribou Herd. Journal of Wildlife Management56(2): 201–11.

Deborah Jacobs was a research assistant at PERC during the pastacademic year. She begins work as a commodity merchandiser forArcher Daniels Midland in July.

References


n 1972, the U.S. governmentbanned the pesticide DDT.

The chemical had been used ex-cessively, especially by the fed-eral government, which refusedto respect the rights of thosewho didn’t want it on theirproperty. The decision to pro-hibit DDT’s use may haveplayed a significant role in help-ing the bald eagle and otherbirds make a comeback. But ithas also allowed malaria to makea comeback.

The worry of scientiststhree decades ago that there wasno good, less toxic, cost-effectivesubstitute for DDT to controlmosquitos and other pests is astrue today as it was in 1972. Adisease that was on the way tobeing vanquished has returnedwith a vengeance.

The hundreds of millions ofsufferers of malaria and the mil-lions of families that lose infantsto malaria are being denied aneffective solution (Attaran et al.2000, 729). The number of countries using DDT hasbeen whittled down to 23. It is produced in only threecountries and is becoming difficult to obtain. TheUnited Nations Environment Program has put it onthe hit list for extinction (Tren and Bate 2001, 22).

Besides killing a child every thirty seconds, ma-laria is a recurring disease for many. Children who sur-vive malaria past infancy suffer an average of six boutseach year, making it the most common reason to missschool; adult sufferers miss an average of ten workingdays a year (United Nations Children’s Fund

DDT’S LEGACY:MALARIA’S RETURN

By Roger E. Meiners and Andrew P. Morriss

[UNICEF] 1999, 4). The infec-tion rate had fallen significantlyover the decades, primarily be-cause of DDT sprayed insidehomes and on mosquito breed-ing sites. But as a UNICEF re-port describes it, “DDT waswidely discredited in the 1960sbecause of its harmful effects onthe environment” (6). So thedisease is nearly back to where itwas 50 years ago.

The tragedy is not being ig-nored. Roll Back Malaria waslaunched in October 1998 byUNICEF, the World Health Or-ganization, and the World Bankto “prevent and control this cen-turies-old scourge” (UNICEF1999, 1).

Since DDT is unavailablein most nations, and interna-tional agencies are shy to use iteven where it is legal, theUNICEF program must rely onother measures. These include“insecticide-treated mosquitonets, mosquito coils, repellants

and other materials; early detection, containment,and prevention of malaria epidemics; and strength-ening of local capacity to monitor malaria in af-fected regions” (UNICEF 1999, 8).

The goal of Roll Back Malaria is to reduce infantmortality from malaria (not the incidence of malaria)by 50 percent by 2010. Even if that optimistic levelcould be reached, it is nowhere near the level of suc-cess achieved by the proper application of DDT inother countries (Goklany 2000).

In malaria prevention, the focus of Roll Back

I

THE 1972 BAN LIVES ON

The disease has returned

to areas in which it had been

eradicated: urban areas of the

Amazon Basin, Korea, Armenia,

Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan.


Malaria is on the use of mosquito nets. People in thetropical regions of the world all sleep under such nets.At a price of $5 to $10 each, they are expensive forpeople in countries where per capita personal incomeis measured in the hundreds of dollars per year. More-over, the nets require continual retreatment—soakingthe nets in liquid insecticide (UNICEF 1999, 3).

Substituting chemically impregnated mosquitonets for DDT has reduced exposure toDDT but increased exposure formany people to malaria, as well as tothe insecticide used in treating thenets.

In regions where malaria is ascourge, people question the viabil-ity and morality of Roll Back Ma-laria when a proven cost-effectivemalaria-control product, DDT, al-ready exists. In December 2000, theWorld Health Organization spon-sored a meeting in Harare, Zimba-bwe, entitled “Regional Consultationto Prepare African Countries Towards Reduction onReliance on DDT for Malaria Control.” Delegates tothe meeting issued a statement expressing the “deepconcerns of the participating member states on thepossible economic and health implications of any re-striction made on DDT use for malaria control”(World Health Organization 2000). In sum, the del-egates noted that no cost-effective or proven alter-natives that are less toxic exist to replace the jobDDT does.

uring the decades since the banning of DDT inthe United States, research on DDT has contin-

ued. This research indicates that when DDT sprayingis ended, malaria’s incidence rises markedly. In thehigh and moderate risk regions of Columbia and Peru,for example, the risk of malaria doubled when spray-ing ceased in the 1990s. The disease has returned toareas in which it had been eradicated: urban areas ofthe Amazon Basin, Korea, Armenia, Azerbaijan, andTajikistan. In Sri Lanka, malaria cases fell from 2.8million and 7,300 deaths per year before DDT spray-ing, to 17 cases and no deaths (Roberts, Manguin,and Mouchet 2000). When the spraying stopped in1961, malaria jumped back to 500,000 cases by 1969(Attaran et al. 2000, 729). The spread of the diseasemeans that it has reappeared even in the UnitedStates and Europe.

That DDT is effective has never been the mainissue; the key questions concern long-term toxicity

and environmental damage. Yet “claims of risks ofDDT to human health and the environment have notbeen confirmed by replicated scientific inquiry,” writeRoberts, Manguin, and Mouchet (2000, 33). Evi-dence from more than 50 years of use indicate that,properly applied, DDT is not harmful to humans orthe environment in general.

DDT appeared to be so harmful in the 1950s and1960s because of its widespread usein heavy dosages, mostly from gov-ernment spray campaigns but alsofrom overuse by private sprayerswho had not learned proper conser-vation. When DDT is sprayed inmassive doses, birds can suffer acuteeffects. “The fault for this lies in themassive agricultural use of DDT.Dusting a single 100-hectare cottonfield, for example, can require morethan 1,200 kg of DDT over 4weeks,” write Attaran et al. (2000,729). Unfortunately, children in de-

veloping countries are paying the cost of excessive usefifty years ago.

Attaran, Amir, Donald R. Roberts, Chris F. Curtis,and Wenceslaus L. Kilama. 2000. BalancingRisks on the Backs of the Poor. Nature Medicine6(7): 729–31.

Goklany, Indur M. 2000. Applying the PrecautionaryPrinciple to DDT. December 2. Available:www.fightingmalaria.org. Cited: March 6, 2001.

Roberts, D. R., S. Manguin, and J. Mouchet. 2000.DDT House Spraying and Re-emerging Malaria.Lancet 356: 330–32.

Tren, Richard, and Roger Bate. 2001. When PoliticsKills: Malaria and the DDT Story. Available:www.fightingmalaria.org. Cited: March 5, 2001.

UNICEF. 1999. Rolling Back Malaria. New York:UNICEF.

World Health Organization. 2000. Delegates’ Report.February 8–10. Available: www.who.int/rbm/DDT/ddt_Zimbabwe.htm. Cited: March 5, 2001.

Roger E. Meiners and Andrew P. Morriss are Senior Associates ofPERC. Their paper, “Pesticides and Property Rights” (PERC PolicySeries, PS-22), from which this excerpt is taken, is available fromPERC and our Web site, www.perc.org. A second selection,forthcoming in the September issue of PERC Reports, will explorethe reasons why DDT was overused.

■

In regions

where malaria is a

scourge, people question the

viability and morality of

Roll Back Malaria.

■

References

D


HEIRLOOM APPLES:A MARKET TASTE?

By Jane S. Shaw

DOES COMMERCE DESTROY DIVERSITY?

I

P

n the nineteenth century, if you livednear Albany or Kingston, New

York, you might have tasted theStroat apple. It was “roundish in-clined to conic, yellowishgreen... very tender, rich; brisksubacid, good to very good,”according to the 1905 bookThe Apples of New York. TheStroat (or Straat) was “for-merly much esteemed amongthe descendants of the Dutchsettlers on the North river,”wrote horticulturist S. A.Beach in this volume. Even so,it had already disappeared. “Wehave not seen this fruit nor has itbeen mentioned by any of our corre-spondents” (Beach 1905, 208).

To Carl Pope, executive director of theSierra Club, who brought this apple to our atten-tion, the loss of the Stroat symbolizes how marketsdiscard what isn’t commercially popular. Thus, hesays, they carry a lesson for endangered species.

The extinction of apple varieties isn’t as seriousas the loss of, say, a cheetah, he says. “But the patterndemonstrates that private markets will reliably pre-serve only varieties and species that serve relativelyimmediate commercial or other human needs. If thereis no market for the Stroat apple formerly found inKingston, New York, it will, and evidently, has, passedaway. . . .”(Pope 1998).

Thus, Pope challenges the view that markets canprotect species. There are several points to address inhis challenge, but this short essay will merely discussthe market for apples.

When people talk about apples, they often echoPope’s theme that commercial pressures have de-stroyed diversity. Keith Schneider, formerly a reporter

for the New York Times, compared the 14kinds of old apple trees on his Michi-

gan farm with the “paltry pickings”in supermarkets. “Shelf life, tex-

ture, uniform ripening and dis-ease resistance are the mostsought-after traits. Distinctivetaste is barely in the first tier ofbreeding goals,” he wrote(Schneider 1998). In a similarvein, Bill Gifford condemnedthe pervasive Red Deliciousapple. “Ubiquitous and medio-cre, a gorgeous fraud, the Red

Delicious has come to symbolizemodern agribusiness at its worst”

(Gifford 1998, 22).Yet, today in the nation’s lead-

ing apple-growing state, Red Delicioustrees are being ripped out. “We can’t sell

Red Delicious because there are better productshere,” says a fruit researcher at Washington StateUniversity (quoted in Lester and Nelson 1999).

ink Ladies, Fujis, Braeburns, Granny Smiths, andRoyal Galas are shoving Red Delicious out of the

nation’s Safeways and Albertson’s. Growers are comb-ing through the 6,000 or so varieties of apples in ex-istence to find new ones. At Little Owl Orchard inWashington State, Doyle and Thelma Fleming hopethey have a winner in the new Cameo apple. In casethey don’t, their own breeding orchard has 4,000 va-rieties they can consider (Guterson 1999).

Consumers who can’t wait for new specialtiescan find obscure apple types at Applesource, a pro-ducer offering home delivery of 75 varieties. Theowner, Tom Vorbeck, lists on his Web site 43 kinds ofapples suited for planting in central Illinois(applesource.com). Tree-Mendus Fruit and Skyline


Orchards (tree-mendus.com) in Michigan offer thepublic 200 varieties.

Growers can find cuttings of old varieties at theSonoma Antique Apple Nursery in Healdsburg, Cali-fornia. To name a few: the Alexander, a Russian applethat pre-dates 1817; the Baldwin, grown in Massa-chusetts in 1784; and the Claygate Pearmain, re-corded in England in 1821. (With apples, seeds don’tgerminate into true varieties; you must graft a cuttingof the type you want.)

Perhaps the leading preservers of old apples areheirloom gardeners. “Since the 1970s,” writesSuzanne P. DeMuth (1998, 6) in the Department ofAgriculture’s four-volume guide to heirlooms, “an ex-panding popular movement dedicatedto perpetuating and distributing thesegarden classics has emerged amonghome gardeners and small-scale grow-ers, with interest and endorsementfrom scientists, historians, environ-mentalists, and consumers.”

One apple enthusiast is CarlosManning, a West Virginia mechanicwhose hobby is looking for antiqueapple trees. He has discovered examples of about 300varieties, including at least two, the Western Beautyand Rainbow, that were thought to be extinct (Ama-rillo Globe-News, March 21, 2000).

ed, long-lasting apples did take over the marketfor a stretch of time as people marveled at hav-

ing good-looking, sweet apples all year. The story ofthe Red Delicious apple itself illustrates how produc-ers strive to find new varieties. In 1892, ClarenceStark of the Stark Brothers nursery in Louisiana, Mis-souri, held a national contest to find the best apple.One was so good that when he bit into it he suppos-edly exclaimed “Delicious! That will be its name”(Terry 1966, 39). Although many consumers are tiredof it now, it will live on. The Fuji (the “best-keepingsweet apple in the world,” according to Tom Vorbeck)is a cross between the Red Delicious and the RallsJanet, an antique apple known to Thomas Jefferson.

As producers constantly try to find what pleasesthe customer, they discover the special, the interest-ing and even the old. Yet the Stroat apple disap-peared. Why?

The Stroat disappeared too long ago to be a vic-tim of modern commercialism, if that means the ad-vent of supermarkets and nationwide transportation.But most likely it failed the market test. Applesource’sVorbeck says about heirloom apples that “something

was wrong about them, as the market changed, thatcaused growers not to make money on them any-more” (Gifford 1998, 24).

Saving an apple variety requires a few people whoreally want it and who are willing to pay someone theprice of tending it. But only a few are needed. Themajority may prefer bright color and consistent taste,but the minority will seek out distinctive characteris-tics and unusual flavors. As people have become morewealthy, their span of tastes has increased, as has theirability to satisfy them. The system of production anddistribution—growers, distributors, catalogs, breedingorchards—has expanded, too, making it easier to save,ship, and sell antique apples and trees. The price of di-

versity has gone down.The Stroat and others have dis-

appeared, but the market saves many,many apples—tart, sweet, yellow,green, red, russet, acidic, nutty, aro-matic, juicy, crunchy.

Can the market save the chee-tah as well? If there are just enoughpeople willing to care for the cheetahand to pay what is needed to protect

it, the answer is yes. And as time goes on, more andmore people fit that description.

Beach, S. A. 1905. The Apples of New York, vol. 2. Al-bany, NY: J. B. Lyon Co.

DeMuth, Suzanne. 1998. Vegetables and Fruits: A Guideto Heirloom Varieties an Community-Based Steward-ship. Vol. 1, Annotated Bibliography. SRB 98-05.Beltsville, MD: National Agricultural Library,U.S. Department of Agriculture, September.

Gifford, Bill. 1998. Fruits of His Labor. WashingtonPost Magazine, October 18, 19–24.

Guterson, David. 1999. The Kingdom of Apples.Harper’s Magazine, October, 41–56.

Lester, David, and Wes Nelson. 1999. Seeds ofChange. Yakima Herald-Republic, December 24.

Pope, Carl. 1998. Letters. PERC Reports, September19.

Schneider, Keith. 1998. In an Old Orchard, Tastesthe Supermarket Forgot. New York Times, June 2.

Terry, Dickson. 1966. The Stark Story. A SpecialPublication of The Bulletin. St. Louis, MO: Mis-souri Historical Society, September.

Jane S. Shaw is a Senior Associate of PERC and editor of PERCReports.

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Saving an

apple variety requires

only a few people.

■

References

R


GREENERPASTURES

PRIVATE INITIATIVES

By Linda E. Platts

BLOWING IN THE WIND

or generations, families who settled on the prai-ries and plains of the great mid-section of the

United States have done battle with the wind. It hasscoured their fields, flattened their crops, and sent icyfingers under the doorways of their homes. But whatwas once a bane has suddenly become a boon. Brokersare working their way across the Midwest and parts ofWest Texas offering cash for wind rights.

Wind is the nation’s fastest-growing source ofelectricity and the capacity is expected to doublewithin the next year. Utility companies are steppingon each other in their efforts to sign up farmers whoare willing to plant a crop of sleek, 200-foot-tall tur-bines in their fields along with the usual corn and soy-beans. In fact, some farmers have discovered thatselling their wind rights is a whole lot more profitablethan raising crops. And even better, they can sit onthe front porch and watch the blades spin rather thanhunker down over a tractor in the hot sun yet still putmoney in the bank.

In Minnesota, farmers can earn about $2,000 ayear per turbine, which takes up about one-eighth ofan acre. Crops grown on the same fields clear about$40 an acre.

—New York Times

ALL-PURPOSE COCONUTS

Thai farmer from a rural province south ofBangkok has found yet another use for the ver-

satile coconut. Not only does its flesh provide food, itstrunk supply wood, and its juice make a deliciousdrink, but now Kitti Maneesrikul is using its oil to fuelthe family truck.

High fuel costs and low commodity prices have

brought suffering to many small farmers. Increasingly,coconut oil has meant cheap fuel for a growing num-ber of the rural poor in Thailand.

The oil is extracted from the dried flesh of thecoconuts and used for cooking. Afterwards, it is dis-posed of and often ends up in the waterways.Maneesrikul discovered that he could filter hisfamily’s used cooking oil, add a small boost of kero-sene, and use it to fill the gas tank on his pick-uptruck. The coconut fuel is 30 percent cheaper thandiesel and saves the family about $115 a month.

Maneesrikul has expanded his sources and nowbuys used coconut oil from food vendors. Althoughsome scientists want the oil tested for possible can-cer-causing pollutants, the coconut oil burns cleanerthan diesel and does not produce carbon dioxide.

Coconut oil fuel could be enormously valuableto Thailand, which produces more than a billion co-conuts a year. It would be particularly appropriate asan alternative fuel for agricultural equipment andfishing boats.

News of Maneesrikul’s success has spread quickly.People show up at his home daily to learn his tech-nique and others have already put their new knowledgeto work. In coconut-rich southern Thailand, a ferry ser-vice has switched entirely to coconut oil for its threeboats at an estimated savings of $10,000 a month.

—Reuters

WASTE NOT WANT NOT

wo companies that appear to have little in com-mon have joined forces to build processing plants

that will convert biomass to energy and create organicfertilizer at the same time. The plants will burn thewaste to produce steam that can power electric gen-erators. The leftover residue can be sold as fertilizer.

The partners are DukeSolutions, one of the fast-

T

F

A


est growing energy service companies in the UnitedStates, and Harmony Products, which specializes inthe development and manufacture of fertilizer. Theirjoint venture was planned to make productive use ofthe waste stream from large Virginia poultry farmslocated in the Chesapeake watershed.

The plants will process 100,000 tons of litterannually, which will produce enough energy to heat15,000 homes. The resulting organic fertilizer willincrease crop yields, which will in turn feed the ani-mals whose wastes are then gasified to produce en-ergy—and of course more fertilizer.

Other advantages include reduced runoff intonearby lakes and streams from the huge poultry pro-ducers. And, the gasification technology used to turnwaste into energy virtually eliminates emissions.

One processing plant is currently under con-struction in Harrisonburg, Va., and three others are inthe planning stages. Eventually, DukeSolutions andHarmony plan to run 200 processing plants world-wide. They are already working on adaptations thatwill allow the plants to use other animal waste as wellas industrial wastewater sludge. These waste-to-en-ergy systems will provide a string of environmentalbenefits including clean, efficient energy, reduction inagricultural runoff, and organic fertilizers.

—Environmental News Service.

SLIPPERY SLOPES

ore than 200 million impoverished peopleworldwide make their homes on hillsides. These

hillsides are the source of some 20 percent of theworld’s freshwater, and yet agricultural activities haveresulted in vast deforestation and topsoil erosion.Since 1993, the International Centre for Tropical Ag-riculture (CIAT) based in Cali, Colombia, has beenworking with farmers to conserve soil and water whilehelping them to increase their meager incomes.

The nonprofit agency has combined the knowl-edge of local communities with computer-based geo-graphic information systems to help monitor farmlandand plan alternative uses. Researchers have also intro-duced new high-yield plants.

In the Cabuyal watershed, the changes havebeen significant. Better seeds have increased food pro-duction for local communities. Fencing aroundstreams has ensured clean water to downstreamhouseholds as well as to local coffee growers. In ex-change, the growers have supplied farmers with water

tanks for their cattle. In newly created buffer zonesaround the streams, farmers have planted trees whichproduce a native fruit called lulo, which they can sellat local markets.

The hillsides project has expanded to areas ofHonduras and Nicaragua as well as some Africancountries. More than 1,000 people from communi-ties, local governments, and other nonprofit agencieshave been trained in the techniques developed byCIAT. The project’s ecological and economic benefitshave been far-reaching.

—Reuters

ON THE BRINK

small, chocolate-brown mammal that inhabitsthe alpine reaches of Vancouver Island in west-

ern Canada has found a benefactor in what may bethe nick of time. With just 40 Vancouver Island mar-mots known to exist in the wild and another 40 liv-ing in captivity, Gordon Blankenstein steppedforward to bankroll a private conservation effort.

The marmot once numbered 500 to 600 on thisisland, but logging and large clear cuts have disturbedits normal dispersal patterns and led to inbreeding.The lack of genetic diversity has made the marmotsvulnerable to disease, resulting in several populationcrashes in the last decade.

Blankenstein, who built his wealth trading onthe Vancouver Stock Exchange, decided it was timeto give back, and he chose to do so by protecting themarmot and several other endangered animals. Hehas spent $300,000 on a breeding facility and coversthe $500,000 annual operating budget.

Biologists from the nonprofit Marmot RecoveryCenter are capturing marmots from different colonieswith subtle genetic differences for a captive breedingprogram. Pups will remain at the center until theyreach young adulthood and then be reintroduced totheir natural habitat on Vancouver Island.

To further support the center, Blankenstein isworking to raise $6 million. He is optimistic that athird of the funds will come from the public, a thirdfrom timber corporations, and a third from govern-ment agencies. Ideally, the money will be used tobuild a high-altitude, quarantine breeding facility onthe island. This location is considered critical toavoid exposing the wild population to any rodentdiseases unknown on Vancouver Island.

—Vancouver Sun

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SOLVING THE COMMONS PROBLEM?

LESSONS FROM THELOBSTER LEGISLATURE

By Alan Ehrenhalt

f there’s any group of Ameri-can citizens you wouldn’t

expect to find at the cuttingedge of political reform, it’s thelobster fishermen along thecoast of Maine. Not only dothey have a national reputationfor being cranky loners—theyreadily accept it. Leslie Dyer, alegendary activist who tried toorganize them in the 1950s, ul-timately concluded it was im-possible. “We fishermen inMaine are as independent as ahog on ice,” he said, “and justas helpless. We’re more or lessset in our ways and we don’tlike to be dictated to.”

But the fact is that, at themoment, these same lobster-men are engaged in one of thecountry’s most interesting ex-periments in cooperative self-government. They have createdlocal legislative bodies that aremaking crucial regulatory deci-sions long made by bureaucratsin Washington. Some of their friends can scarcelybelieve it’s happening. “You’re taking a bunch offishermen that work alone and asking them to getinvolved in a team process,” says Patrice Farrey, ofthe Maine Lobsterman’s Association. “It’s a very newthing for them.”

But it is happening nevertheless.Lobster fishing is big business in Maine. More

than 7,000 individuals are engaged in it, and in a goodyear they bring out of the water 50 million pounds ofcrustaceans, worth half a billion dollars—roughly 2percent of the gross state product. So the health of the

industry is central to Maine’seconomy.

In the past few years,things have been going well.After a declining catch in the1970s and ’80s that seemed tosuggest trouble, the lobsters areplentiful again in the oceanwaters off Eastport, Kittery andCasco Bay. The fishermen aremaking decent money.

But that’s precisely theproblem. Lobster fishing is anextremely easy business to en-ter—anybody with $50,000 incapital can acquire a boat andset of traps, and head out intothe water. When the catch isas good as it is now, hundredsof newcomers are motivated togive it a try. And establishedfishermen start putting inlarger and larger units. Prettysoon, the number of lobstersbegins to dwindle, and therearen’t enough of them left tosupport all of the families de-

pendent on catching them.It’s not just a theoretical fear. On both the Atlan-

tic and Pacific coasts, overfishing and gradual deple-tion of the stock are more the rule than theexception. In recent years, it has happened with Alas-kan king crab, scallops, shrimp, and sea urchins, and ithas begun to happen with cod, halibut, and sea bass.Last year, the U.S. Commerce Department reportedthat 98 different species were overfished—in otherwords, fewer or smaller fish each year due to too muchfishing. Since 1994, the federal government has spent$160 million on subsidies to those hurt by overfishing

I

Maine lobstermen are engaged

in one of the country’s most

interesting experiments in

cooperative self-government.


■

Stop grousing

and start looking

for ways to solve problems

on a cooperative and

democratic basis.

■

in New England, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest.Experts who watch these events frequently refer

to them as a classic “problem of the commons”—asituation in which the relentless pursuit of self-inter-est by members of a community eventually destroysthe livelihood of everyone within it. The individualfisherman gets to keep everything he finds, while thecosts of a depleted fishing ground are shared by all.And as the resource economist Donald R. Leal pointsout, you can’t store fish in a silo, or just leave them inthe water for next year. If you and I are competing forlobsters off Casco Bay, it’s reasonably certain thatwhatever I don’t take, you will catch and sell. So weboth go all out, and pretty soon there’s hardly any-thing left.

The federal government has the authority to in-tervene in cases of overfishing, andover the years, it has been willing todo so. The 1976 Magnuson Act pro-vides for “limiting access to the fisheryin order to achieve optimum yield.”

In practice, the feds haven’ttaken any action on the Maine lob-ster front in recent years. But theykeep making noises about it, andthat’s frightening to virtually every-one in the lobster business, becausethe federal government can do somedrastic and unpleasant things when itmoves in. It can set an overall limiton the catch. It can impose a quota on each indi-vidual fisherman. Or it can say that all fishing musttake place during certain months of the year, and atno other time. For a group of individualistic entrepre-neurs who don’t like to be dictated to, that wouldamount to the ultimate insult.

It is for the purpose of avoiding that insult thatMaine lobstermen, over the past five years, have setout to create a wholly improbable new structure ofself-government. They have divided the state intoseven lobster-fishing zones. Each zone contains be-tween 8 and 14 districts. Every one of the districts has100 licensed fishermen. And the job of each of theseunits is to cooperate in crafting rules that will preventoverfishing and stave off the dreaded intrusion of thefederal bureaucrats.

The first thing the lobster government did wasto agree that it wouldn’t put a limit on fish, it wouldput a limit on the number of traps each fishermancould put in the water. That was a populist decision.It penalizes the big boats that were doing saturationfishing, but it allows the smaller licensees to proceed

pretty much as they always had.Next came new rules for entry. Any new fisher-

men now has to serve a two-year apprenticeship be-fore becoming a licensed lobsterman on his own.

Critics complained that the lobstermen werecreating a cartel, restraining trade and protecting theirown incomes as much as they were protecting thesupply of fish. The lobstermen and their supporterssaid they didn’t have much choice. “In a sense, yes,”admits James Wilson, a University of Maine professorwho is advising the group. “What we’re talking abouthere is a cartel that will restrict output . . . If you don’tdo something to restore the fishery, you end up witha depleted fishery.”

Whatever one might think of the individualdecisions, it’s hard to escape the idea that something

interesting is going on here. A formof grassroots government has beencreated in a difficult situation, andhas succeeded in making hard politi-cal choices that mainstream govern-ment has long been unable to make.

Lobster government may end uphaving a significance beyond Maine,and beyond the fishing industry. It’snot only an experiment in grassrootsresponsibility, it’s a venture in “civicenvironmentalism”—the doctrinethat sound environmental policy canbe made just as well at the local and

community level as in the corridors of the U.S. De-partment of the Interior or the Environmental Protec-tion Agency.

It’s not just fishermen who find much of federalregulation on the environment to be an unacceptablyblunt instrument. The same complaints come fromcities stripped of highway funding by the Clean AirAct, counties hit with huge water cleanup bills underthe Clean Water Act, and planners stymied by whatseems to them mindlessly rigid interpretation of theEndangered Species Act.

The lobster legislature suggests a strategy for someof the local activists who are most upset with federalenvironmental policy: Stop grousing and start lookingfor ways to solve problems on a cooperative and demo-cratic basis.

If a Maine lobsterman can do that, just aboutanybody can.

Alan Ehrenhalt is editor of Governing magazine. This article isexcerpted, with permission, from a longer one which appeared in theOctober 2000 issue of Governing.


he Forest Service andother federal land

management agencies arereverting to a custodialmanagement style typicalof earlier times. This shiftfrom active to passivemanagement comes atgreat cost. While highlymotivated special interestgroups are using their in-fluence to lock up nationalforests, taxpayers are pay-ing the price throughshrinking recreational ac-cess, lost returns on valu-able assets, wastefulgovernment spending, andpoor land stewardship.

Since the late 1980s, timber output has declined75 percent, but the costs of the timber program showno reciprocal decline. The overall agency budget hascontinued to hover around $3.5 billion annually since1988, even as timber output and revenues have fallen.(See figure.)

Many special interest groups maintain that halt-ing all timber harvests on national forests will restorethese forests to ecological health, but experience saysotherwise.

In Santa Fe, N.M., the Forest Guardians, a na-tionally known advocacy group, has dedicated itself toending all commercial logging on federal lands. Andyet in 2000 fires burned out of control in nearby LosAlamos, incinerating many of the forests this grouphoped to preserve through zero-cut policies. In the af-termath, the group’s executive director, Rex Wahl,sees the situation differently: “[J]udicious cutting ofsmall trees is what’s needed” (Billings Gazette, August18, 2000) to prevent future catastrophe, he says.

IS NO USE GOOD USE?

THE HIGH COSTS OFHANDS-OFF MANAGEMENT

By Holly Lippke Fretwell

In many cases now,the public input process isdominated by special in-terest groups such as theForest Guardians andother like-minded groups.As a result, there has beena virtual halt to rationalforest planning and man-agement.

Litigation and ap-peals continue to block ef-forts to protect forestsusing hands-on manage-ment. A pilot project torestore national forest landsurrounding Flagstaff,Ariz., is just one example.

About 1,500 acres offorest burn each year near Flagstaff threatening com-munity health, the economy, and the ecological in-tegrity of the forest. To deal with this problem, severalgroups including the Forest Service, the Grand Can-yon Trust, and Northern Arizona University, as wellas numerous local, state, and county officials cametogether to form the Grand Canyon Forests Partner-ship. This collaborative partnership set out to analyze10,000 acres annually and come up with a plan thatwould return natural ecosystem function to the ur-ban-wildland interface. Appropriate treatment wouldreduce the risk of catastrophic fire and serve as a dem-onstration project for other communities.

Implemented in 1998 and exempt from publicinput and appeals, the first project compared differentrestoration prescriptions on a 300-acre plot. Based onthe information gathered in the first project, the sec-ond project was designed to treat 9,000 acres and tobe the first in a series of landscape-scale ecosystemrestorations. So far, three appeals and one lawsuit

Sources: Budget data: Office of Management and Budget (1999). Harvestdata: Jim Culbert, budget assistant, U.S. Forest Service, Washington, DC,by fax, March 31, 1998; Forest Service (2001).

BUDGETS HIGH,HARVESTS DECLININGT


have been filed against the completed environmentalassessment and another lawsuit is expected. Appel-lants include the Forest Guardians, the National For-est Protection Alliance, and the Forest ConservationCouncil. Meanwhile, catastrophic fire near Flagstaffdoes more damage every year to habitat for the en-dangered goshawk and the Mexican spotted owl thanany other forest activity.1

Throughout the West, other projects to reducefire risk through thinning or to salvage fire-burnedtimber are meeting a similar fate.

• In the fall of 2000, the Flathead National Forestin Montana withdrew one of its largest timbersales. The project would have thinned a dense,3,000-acre ponderosa pine forest in order to re-store the open-canopy typical of its historicalstructure. The sale was withdrawn when twoenvironmental groups filed a lawsuit to require asupplemental environmental impact statement.

• In the Blue Mountains of Oregon, harvest on theWallowa-Whitman National Forest declinedfrom nearly 300 million board feet a year in 1987to less than 50 million in 1997. Loss to bug dep-redation is growing (Fretwell 1999).

• In 2000, the Forest Service withdrew 56 timbersales on dozens of national forests across theSouth. Though many of these sales were intendedto create habitat and restore ecosystems for en-dangered, threatened, and sensitive species, theywere challenged by the Sierra Club and other en-vironmental groups (McCabe 2001, 4).2

Experts on forest health from many backgroundsagree that the national forests cannot heal themselveswithin a relevant human time frame. Fire ecologistSteve Arno suggests: “With management—thinning,harvesting, and a carefully controlled burning pro-gram designed to encourage growth of native plantand tree species—we can slowly reduce the risk ofsevere wildfires and disease, creating a more naturalrange of conditions, which is the first step in ecosys-tem restoration.” As a former chief of the Forest Ser-vice and a wildlife biologist, Jack Ward Thomas, says:“Biologically speaking, eliminating harvesting, whilecontinuing to control wildfires, would have signifi-cant adverse effects on bird and mammal species thatthrive on early succession forest conditions” (quotedin Peterson 2000, 14).

Not only have costs increased with added regu-

lations and restrictions, but so have confrontationsbetween the agency and the public. The late SenatorHubert Humphrey sponsored the National ForestManagement Act for the very purpose of involvingthe public in Forest Service planning and reducingconflict. Humphrey said the act would mean that“forest managers could practice forestry in the forestand not in the courts” (quoted in Fedkiw 1996, 193).Ironically, increased public participation has only in-tensified the debate over federal land use. The num-ber of appeals rose from more than 1,000 per year atthe end of the 1980s to more than 2,600 by 1993(Fedkiw 1996, 212).

The public input process allows private individu-als and special interest groups to halt timber sales andharvests without regard to the forest plans and thescience that supports those plans. The taxpayers, theForest Service, and the ecological integrity of the for-est pay a high price, while those filing the appeals payrelatively little.

1. John Gerritsma, urban interface, Coconino Na-tional Forest, U.S. Forest Service, Region 3, Flagstaff,AZ, telephone interview, Nov. 3, 2000.

2. Additional data provided by Don McKenzie,Southeast field representative, Wildlife ManagementInstitute, Ward, AR, telephone interview, Jan. 30, 2001.

Fedkiw, John. 1996. Managing Multiple Uses on Na-tional Forests, 1905-1995. Washington, DC:USDA, Forest Service.

Forest Service. 2001. Quarterly Sold and HarvestReports. January 11. Available: www.fs.fed.us/land/fm. Cited April 5, 2001.

Fretwell, Holly Lippke. 1999. Forests: Do We GetWhat We Pay For? Public Lands Report II.Bozeman, MT: PERC.

McCabe, Richard E. 2001. Outdoor News Bulletin.Washington, DC: Wildlife Management Insti-tute, January 15.

Office of Management and Budget. 1999. Budget of theU.S. Government FY 2000. Washington, DC.

Peterson, Jim. 2000. Why the West’s Forests AreBurning Up. Evergreen, Winter.

Holly Lippke Fretwell is a Research Associate with PERC andauthor of Public Lands Report IV: Is No Use Good Use? fromwhich this article is excerpted. The full report, edited by Linda E.Platts, is available on PERC’s Web site (www.perc.org) or fromthe PERC office.

Notes

References


WHERE RESEARCH ANDPOLICY MEET

TA N G E N T S By Daniel K. Benjamin

economist, n. a scoundrel whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

—after Ambrose Bierce

hroughout the nineteenth century, Arctic explo-ration dominated popular culture in Europe and

America, much as space exploration did in the twen-tieth century. Both quests involved competitive racesfor major geographic prizes; both led to fame and hon-ors for the returning explorers; and both had theirshare of death and disaster, sometimes leading to callsfor cessation of the efforts.

Yet there is a key difference between the twowaves of exploration. The twenti-eth century space race involvedprimarily the bureaucracies of twonational governments, while thenineteenth century polar expedi-tions were undertaken by both pri-vate organizations and nationalgovernments. Because the expedi-tions all involved common goals,prospective rewards, and penalties,we are immediately led to a ques-tion familiar to readers of this col-umn: How well can the privatesector perform a function tradition-ally conceived as the natural prov-ince of the government? Accordingto recent research by Jonathan Karpoff (2001), theanswer for Arctic exploration appears to be: Betterthan the government itself.

Government-sponsored polar expeditionstended to be larger and better funded than private ex-peditions. Yet by most measures, the government ex-peditions fared poorly. They made fewer majordiscoveries, introduced fewer technological innova-tions, were subject to higher rates of scurvy, lost moreships, and had more explorers die.

There were four major goals of nineteenth cen-

■

Government-sponsored polar

expeditions made fewer

major discoveries,

introduced fewer

innovations, lost more ships,

and had more explorers die.

■

T tury polar exploration: the discovery and navigationof the Northwest Passage (connecting the Atlanticand Pacific oceans via a northern route); reaching theNorth Pole; traversing Greenland; and discoveringthe fate of the lost John Franklin expedition of 1845.A private expedition was the first to navigate theNorthwest Passage and another private group was thefirst to cross Greenland. Yet another private venturediscovered the fate of the Franklin expedition.

The sole portion of a majorArctic prize that can be credited toa publicly sponsored expedition isthe initial verification that aNorthwest Passage exists. And evenin this case, four of the 66 crewmembers died, and the rest werenear starvation when rescued by an-other expedition.

Not only did private expedi-tions yield more success; they did somore safely and at lower cost. Forexample, an average of six crewmembers died on each public expe-dition, compared to an average ofonly one on private expeditions.

Moreover, public ventures lost ships at twice the rateof private ventures, and suffered from debilitatingscurvy at nearly four times the rate of private expedi-tions. And private expeditions used far fewer crewmembers and less vessel tonnage.

It might be thought that these differences weredue to confounding factors. It is possible, for example,that public expeditions concerned themselves morewith “minor” discoveries that yielded less spectacular,but still socially important outcomes. Alternatively,public ventures might have been directed at the


Reference

TANGENTS

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riskier, more difficult challenges eschewed by privateexpeditions. Neither of these conjectures is borne outby the facts.

Karpoff uses the records of 92 different expedi-tions to examine statistically a wide variety of successmeasures. He finds that private expeditions were moreeffective—indeed, about five times as successful—re-gardless of the measure used. Moreover, he is unable tofind any evidence that public expeditions undertookriskier or more difficult projects than did private.

What, then, accounts for the superior perfor-mance of the private sector? The fundamental—andoften fatal—disadvantage of public expeditions wasthat they were often initiated and organized by indi-viduals different from those ultimately appointed tocommand them. Thus, the key planners often lackedthe incentives to plan correctly. And even though theactual leaders of public expeditions had strong incen-tives to do well (if only to survive), they were oftensaddled with crews, ships, or plans that made successunlikely. In contrast, private organizers generally ledthe expeditions themselves—and so bore the fullbrunt of the decisions they had made.

The consequences showed up in a variety ofcontexts. First, private leaders undertook far moreextensive preparations. Second, they uncovered andexploited information that was crucial to success.For example, private explorers routinely utilized

native sealskin clothing, while public ventures stuckwith far less protective wool garments. Private ven-tures also learned native techniques of shelter con-struction and overland travel, while publicexpeditions used tents and largely escheweddogsleds, skis, and snowshoes. Third, the privatelyfunded expeditions acted on the widely recognizedfact that small parties were better able than largeparties to move quickly and support themselves inthe Arctic. Governments, in contrast, continued tomount fatally large expeditions up until 1875.

Overall, Karpoff concludes that “men died andships were lost not because of the public nature of thefunding per se, but rather because of the perverse in-centives, slow adaptation, and ineffective organiza-tional structures that frequently accompanied publicfunding.” Of course all of this refers to events of acentury or more ago. I shall leave it up to the readerto decide whether there is a message here for today.

Karpoff, Jonathan M. 2001. Public versus Private Ini-tiative in Arctic Exploration: The Effects of In-centives and Organizational Structure. Journal ofPolitical Economy 109(11): 38–78.

Daniel K. Benjamin is a PERC Senior Associate and Professor ofEconomics at Clemson University. “Tangents” investigates policyimplications of recent academic research.

What’s new

PERC UPDATE

A new program headed by Roger Meiners andAndrew Morriss and sponsored by the Roe Founda-tion focuses on the publication of PERC-related ma-terial in law reviews. Recently, Morriss and RichardL. Stroup published “Quartering Species” in Environ-mental Law. Bruce Yandle and Morriss have written“The Technologies of Property Rights,” forthcomingin the Ecology Law Quarterly. “The Destructive Roleof Land Use Planning,” by Meiners and Morriss, waspublished in the Tulane Environmental Law Journal.

The Chicago Journal of International Law has acceptedan article on environmental aspects of foreign policyby Terry L. Anderson and J. Bishop Grewell.

■

PERC is pleased to welcome two Julian SimonFellows this summer. Robert McCormick, Professorof Economics at Clemson University, will study howlaws and regulations affect the supply of natural re-


sources such as wild game, water, and forests. SethNorton, Aldeen Professor of Business at WheatonCollege, will research the link between economicinstitutions and population growth. Julian SimonFellowships are provided for senior visiting scholarswhose research reflects the spirit of the work of thelate Julian Simon.

■

Dominic (Nick) Parker, a former PERC Fellow,is now a Research Associate at PERC, where he isstudying conservation easements. He recently com-pleted a master’s degree in applied economics at Mon-tana State University.

PERC Research Associate Bishop Grewell willattend the Yale School of Forestry this fallpursuing a master’s degree in en-vironmental management. Re-cently, Grewell was a runner-upfor the Felix Morley JournalismAward. David Gerard, a PERC Re-search Associate, is moving toCarnegie Mellon University, wherehe will study the relationship betweenenvironmental regulations and tech-nology.

Three new fellows will spend thesummer at PERC. Anna Michalak, aPh.D. candidate in civil and environ-mental engineering at Stanford, will studyinformation requirements for identifyingpollutants with Terry Anderson. SeanMulholland, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in ap-plied economics at Clemson University, willstudy trusts with Roger Meiners. Joshua Utt, a Ph.D.candidate in economics at Washington State Univer-sity, will work with visiting Julian Simon Fellow Rob-ert McCormick on carbon sequestration.

Dana Joel Gattuso has joined PERC as ourWashington, D.C., liaison. She will help plan semi-nars and increase our communication with policymakers and opinion leaders. She can be reached [email protected].

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PERC’s fourth Public Lands report Is No UseGood Use? has just been published. The paper (anexcerpt from which appears on p. 14) examines thegrowing tendency for the federal government to setaside land rather than manage it. The paper, written

by Holly Lippke Fretwell and edited by Linda Platts,is available on PERC’s Web site, www.perc.org.

■

PERC has just published a collection of propos-als for improving federal environmental manage-ment. “Conservative Conservation,” edited byDonald R. Leal, recommends policies affecting en-dangered species, national monuments, grazing rights,recreation, and water markets. The booklet is avail-able on PERC’s Web site, www.perc.org.

■

Recent presentations: Don Leal gave aseminar in Washington, D.C., on fishingITQs (individual transferable quotas) withPeter Emerson of Environmental Defenseand Felix Cox, a Gulf Coast fisherman.Holly Fretwell was the keynote speakerfor the National Forest Counties andSchools Coalition conference in Reno.Bruce Yandle addressed congressionalstaffers on Capitol Hill for theMercatus Center and spoke at theOffice of Personnel ManagementExecutive Training Center and theUniversity of North Alabama.Terry Anderson lectured onCapitol Hill, at the Office ofManagement and Budget, andat the American Enterprise In-

stitute. This month he addresses the Out-door Writers Association. Richard Stroup and JaneShaw lecture in Costa Rica in June at a teachers’ semi-nar directed by J. R. Clark, who holds the ProbascoChair of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

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Additional information: Bruce Benson’s article,“Federal Immunity from Toxic Substances,” whichappeared in PERC Reports in March, was excerptedfrom Cutting Green Tape, edited by Richard L. Stroupand Roger E. Meiners and published by TransactionPress. This collection of essays assesses the enormousliability imposed by federal policies on toxic sub-stances. The book stems from research sponsored bythe Independent Institute of Oakland, California. Toorder Cutting Green Tape, call 1-800-927-8733 or con-tact www.independent.org.


PERC Reports reader who wants to remainanonymous asked us to take his name off our

mailing list. He had just read the article, “Clear-Cut,”by Wallace Kaufman (March 2001).

“A lead article defending clearcutting?” he ex-claimed. “What in the world does bad, outdated for-estry have to do with free market environmentalism?Send someone to the library to read about New For-estry, especially studies by Jerry Franklin and his col-leagues.1 Even MacBlo2 has reformed and given upclear-cutting!”

Wallace Kaufman replies:

I do understand why the reader suggests studyingthe New Forestry methods of Jerry Franklin and oth-ers. I don’t understand how he reads a blanket en-dorsement of clear-cutting into the chapter selectedfrom my book.

Besides making an unjustified generalization, thewriter misses four main points:

First, as I stated in the article, loggers were cut-ting “pine trees that had taken over old fields andpastures.” These fields and pastures had been them-selves clear-cuts. Instead of a crop of hay or corn be-ing clear-cut every year, my neighbor, like mostowners of second-growth forest, was harvesting a cropafter 35 or 40 years. Environmentalists who protestclear-cuts but love cropland and pasture have strangepriorities. Why aren’t they out protesting horse farmsthat might revert to forest but for the consumerism ofhorse lovers?

The second point follows from this. I pointedout that “a clear-cut does not destroy nature itself butthe nature we love and have become accustomed toseeing.” A clear-cut is temporary, as farms are not.(Nothing against farming—just using them for per-spective.) Even clear-cutting hardwoods where farm-ing never existed is usually second-growth cutting,and the forest rapidly regenerates from intact roots.Where pine plantation replaces hardwood forest, theecosystem is changed, of course. Now we have a for-

est farm where wildlife are welcome and the growingtrees won’t be disturbed for at least two decades.

Third, clear-cuts in this part of the world (south-eastern United States), and in many others, do notcreate biological deserts. They often contain moreanimal biomass and biodiversity than do old-growthforests. There’s some debate about whether they alsolock up more carbon than old-growth forest does.

Finally, my neighbor would have given up a sig-nificant amount of money to do a selective cut. Inother words, he would have been paying tens of thou-sands of his own money for the sake of people wholike to see tall trees.

If environmentalists want to manage private for-est lands, they would be a lot more convincing if theywere willing to invest their own money—individuallyor through organizations. I bought my 112 acres so thatI could let the big trees stand. When environmental-ists really care enough about forests, they will also payfor preservation with their own money instead of de-manding that others pay for their preferences.

My choice means I’m forgoing (read paying)thousands of dollars a year to enjoy my trees. It meansI don’t go trekking in Nepal, skiing in Vail, send kidsto private universities, have two bathrooms, rent abeach cottage, or buy my clothes at REI and EddieBauer. My only regret has been that in 1996 a hurri-cane clear-cut big swathes of my old growth. Shall weregulate the weather, too?

1. The New Forestry, espoused in the early 1990sby Jerry Franklin, Professor of Forestry at the Univer-sity of Washington, and others, emphasizes modifyingclear-cuts to leave wildlife habitat.

2. MacMillan Bloedel is one of Canada’s largestforest products companies.

Wallace Kaufman is author of Coming Out of the Woods: TheSolitary Life of a Maverick Novelist (Perseus Publishing) and NoTurning Back: Dismantling the Fantasies of EnvironmentalThinking (iUniverse.com, Inc.).

A

RESPONSE

“CLEAR-CUT” REVISITED

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WHAT IS THE

STATE OF HUMANITY?By Indur M. Goklany

EXCERPT

ince 1800, global population has increased aboutsixfold. Manufacturing industries have increased

seventy-five times in value and coal production 500times. Overall, global economic product has multi-plied more than fiftyfold. Despite the environmentaldisruption which might have been caused by this ac-tivity, the state of humanity has never been better.

In the last two centuries, the average person’s lifeexpectancy at birth has doubled, infant mortality isless than a third of what it used to be, and real incomehas grown sevenfold. Food is more affordable. A childis less likely to go to bed hungry and a woman is farless likely to die in childbirth. Children are morelikely to be in school than at work.

People are more educated and freer to choosetheir rulers and express their views. They are morelikely to live under the rule of law and are less fearfulof being arbitrarily deprived of life or limb, freedom,property, and other basic human rights. Not only iswork less physically demanding, but people workfewer hours and have more leisure time and money todevote to optional pursuits.

Although gaps between richer and poorer na-tions may be expanding in terms of per capita income,gaps in the critical aspects of human well-being (par-ticularly life expectancy, infant mortality, hunger andmalnourishment, and literacy) have for the most partshrunk over the past half century.

With respect to life expectancy, infant mortalityand hunger, developing countries are better off thanwere developed countries at equivalent levels of in-come. These improvements have come from reducingdeath and disease due to inadequate food supplies andinfectious and parasitic diseases such as cholera, ma-laria, typhoid, diarrhea, dysentery.

This excerpt comes from “Economic Growth and the State ofHumanity,” by Indur M. Goklany, a PERC Julian Simon Fellow in2000. The paper, complete with references, notes, graphs, andtables, is available on the Web at www.perc.org, or from PERC.

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