Owls, Ferrets, and Free Markets; K.L. Billingsly

THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY OWLS, FERRETS, AND FREE MARKETS by K. L. Billingsley R anchers in the western states like black footed ferrets because they wreak havoc on the prairie-dog towns that cause ranchers much grief. But when ranchers see a black-footed ferret, they are likely to shoot, shovel, and shut up about it. What would lead ranchers to act against their interests? Federal regulation. The black-footed fer ret has been declared an endangered spe cies, like spotted owls and various brands of woodpeckers and snails. If an endangered species is discovered on your property and federal regulators find out about it, they will make life very difficultfor you. In fact, you may not be able to use your property. The Constitution of the United States stipulates that you may not be forced to quarter soldiers on your property without compensation. As Montana State econom ics professor and former Interior Depart ment official Richard Stroup points out, "the military pays for what it takes," but environmental bureaucrats do not. Stroup notes that current regulations require land owners to quarter all manner of species, or even a wetland, with no compensation.

To many observers, this constitutes a "taking" and should be compensated. John Echeverria, chief legal counsel of the Au dubon Society, disagrees, seeing the call for K. L. Billingsley is a media fellow of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. compensation as a money-making scam and radical reinterpretation of the Constitution. Echeverria favors stepping up the regula tory enforcement that has become quite draconian. According to Nancie Marzulla, formerly of the Justice Department and now chief legal counsel for Defenders of Property Rights, some 800 people have beenjailed for environmental infractions since 1982. That figure includes seven for violating wetlands policy. According to Vice President Al Gore, the world and nation stand at the brink of an environmental apocalypse. By Gore's stan dards, then, the regulatory approach is pro tecting neither the environment nor the individual rights that constitute the bedrock of American government and society. Some people see a better way: free-market envi ronmentalism, which is more than a theory.

The government of Zimbabwe has come to the rescue of dwindling elephant herds by privatizing hunting rights. Poaching has vir tually disappeared, the elephants are thriv ing, and the income of the villagers has doubled. In the United States, the group Ducks Unlimited has preserved more wetlands than government departments boasting much larger budgets, resources, and legal clout. Hank Fischer, the Northern Rockies rep resentative of Defenders of Wildlife says 251 252 THE FREEMAN • MAY 1994 that the Endangered Species Act (ESA) would force people to face both costs and has been ineffective on private lands, which benefits. According to Anderson, the fed harbor fifty percent of endangered species. eral government lost $23 million on recre Fischer's group compensates ranchers ation last year. when wolves kill livestock. The group also Parks could be privatized and companies pays ranchers to let wolves develop on their could lease their land to hikers, hunters, and land. fishermen. Another market measure would R.J. Smith of the Competitive Enterprise be the trading of permits. For example if a Institute is an avid bird-watcher and former logging company owned some old-growth president of the Monmouth (N.J.) Audubon forest, it could trade that area for a timber Society. Smith notes that around the turn of region that they could harvest.

the century the wood duck became an en- "When you own assets you take better dangered species. The ducks now thrive, care of them," says Richard Stroup, who not due to government regulation but to adds that the market "forces even short private landowners who built boxes for the sighted people to account for the future." ducks to use in nesting. Something similar Stroup argues that, contrary to what many happened with the osprey. But things have believe, the government is more short changed since the ESA. sighted than the market. He cites the case of At present, Smith notes, "there is no a government official he worked with who incentive to help the spotted owl," since agreed that a certain inexpensive research building boxes for the birds will only attract project had merit but who failed to fund it predatory regulators. In this way the ESA, because it outlasted his tenure in the Interior Smith adds, provides "perverse incentives" Department.

and creates a "lose-lose" situation. While those on opposite sides of the The largest landowner in the United environmental debate disagree with each States is not some tycoon or corporation but other's beliefs, observes Stroup, a market the U.S. Government, which still controls system based on common law will force about one-third of the nation's land. Econ-them to respect each other's rights. And omist Terry Anderson, Senior Research since there is no perfection in human affairs, Associate at the Montana-based Political Stroup urges all sides to ask the "compared Economy Research Center (PERC) and co-to what?" question. author of Free Market Environmentalism, In the end, there are only two ways to advocates a plan in which the federal gov-solve the environmental question: by regu ernment could sell some of this land to lation or by property rights. According to private groups such as the Sierra Club, the best evidence to date, the property rights which are interested in preserving old-approach comes closest to a win-win growth forest. This type of privatiza,tion situation. D \-' ~ 7?N~J Tibor Machan, of the philosophy faculty at Auburn University, escaped at age 14 from Communist Hungary in 1953. His experiences and reflections appear in his book Liberty and Culture, Essays on the Idea of a Free Society (Prometheus, 1989).