The Economics of Habitat Protection

Often in the federal budgetary process, habitat restoration receives more attention and more funding than habitat protection.  This is understandable as restoration creates jobs and is sexier creating photo opportunities for politicians and federal officials holding shovels and wearing hardhats at some blighted streamside.  However, habitat protection generally provides a more cost effective way to protect the same ecosystem services targeted by restoration projects.   All other things equal, if the end result is maintaining ecosystem function at a certain level it makes the most sense to prevent degradation of a function watershed than to restore function in a degraded habitat for many reasons.  One, not all restoration activities are successful at restoring full watershed function.  Two, restoration activities are extremely expensive while protection may also be costly but may also be relatively inexpensive.  However, rarely are all other things equal when talking about landscape level habitat issues.  Instead, managers are faced with balancing multiple criteria to protect or restore the most ecosystem services they can for their limited dollars. In this light, perhaps it makes more sense to view protection on one end and restoration on the other end of a continuum encompassing all ecosystem services provided by habitat. This presentation will explore the conditions under which protection is more cost effective than restoration in a general sense.  Additionally, this presentation will develop continuum of watershed quality from fully functional to impaired and discuss how economic criteria can be used to rank protection and restoration goals.