Abstract
AbstractSpillover impacts pose challenges for the management of protected areas (PAs). The issue of external threats encroaching on PAs has long been recognized, but a corollary—that PA conservation can increase costs borne by neighboring governments or landowners—is less well appreciated. In some contexts, basic principles of fairness and cooperation suggest that PA users should help pay these costs. Several countries have developed mechanisms for distributing the costs of spillover impacts to PA users, but not the United States. Here, we investigate whether and how US park visitors could help address one type of spillover, the need for wildlife conservation efforts beyond park boundaries, using a case study of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). We examine a “conservation fee” recently proposed in the Wyoming legislature, along with tax‐based alternatives. After exploring some costs of wildlife conservation in GYE, we estimate that a fee of up to $10 per vehicle could generate up to $13 million annually, and tax‐based approaches considerably more. We consider legal, political, and governance challenges, and ways to mitigate them. The GYE could serve as a demonstration site for visitor funding of cooperative, large‐landscape conservation, for potential future expansion in the US and beyond.
Highlights
A growing number of conservation practitioners and policymakers in the US aim to conserve large landscapes as a means of securing biodiversity, open space, water quality, economic opportunity, and climate resilience (McKinney, Scarlett, & Kemmis, 2010)
Some protected areas (PAs), such as US National Wildlife Refuges, exist primarily to protect wildlife habitat. Others, such as US National Parks, are mandated to protect wildlife among a broader set of values. Fulfilling this mandate to protect wildlife can pose challenges for PA managers because wildlife population viability may require that populations access surrounding
We examine a specific, 2018 resolution of the Wyoming state legislature proposing that Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks (YNP and GTNP) collect a “conservation fee” from visitors (Wyoming Legislature, 2018)
Summary
Harnessing visitors' enthusiasm for national parks to fund cooperative large-landscape conservation. Middleton1 | Temple Stoellinger2 | Harshad Karandikar1 | Bryan Leonard3 | Holly Doremus4 | Claire Kremen. Funding information Buffalo Bill Center of the West; George B.
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