Abstract
The annual budget for the United States National Park Service was roughly $3 billion in 2016. This is distributed amongst 405 National Parks, 23 national scenic and historic trails, and 60 wild and scenic rivers. Entrance fees and concessions generate millions of dollars in income for the National Park Service; however, this metric fails to account for the total value of the National Parks. In failing to consider the value of the ecosystem services provided by the National Parks, we fail to quantify and appreciate the contributions our parks make to society. This oversight allows us to continue to underfund a valuable part of our natural capital and consequently damage our supporting environment, national heritage, monetary economy, and many of our diverse cultures. We explore a simple benefits transfer valuation of the United States’ national parks using National Land Cover Data from 2011 and ecosystem service values determined by Costanza et al. This produces an estimate suggesting the parks provide $98 billion/year in ecosystem service value. If the natural infrastructure ‘asset’ that is our national park system had a budget comparable to a piece of commercial real estate of this value, the annual budget of the National Park Service would be roughly an order of magnitude larger at something closer to $30 billion rather than $3 billion.
Highlights
The national parks can be regarded as an asset of natural capital
Given that the annual budget of the National Park service is around $3 billion, and the value of the associated ecosystem services is more than 28 times that, we suggest they are grossly underfunded in terms of return on investment
In this paper we present a valuation of the United States National Parks from an ecological economics perspective
Summary
The national parks can be regarded as an asset of natural capital. Traditional capital assets are frequently valued in dollars; estimating the dollar value of natural capital (e.g., the National Parks) is fraught with complexity and uncertainty. We provide an economic estimate of the annual value of ecosystem services provided by this natural capital asset to present an argument for more substantial investment in the maintenance and preservation of our parks. This economic valuation of the ecosystem services provided annually by the national parks is based on a simple direct benefits transfer analysis using landcover data and values per biome associated with the respective landcovers [1]. Ecosystem services provided by nature have many market failure properties including unclear property rights, public good nature, externalities, and common pool resources These estimates of value are not intended to enable commodification of ecosystem services or the natural capital assets that generate them.
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