Conservation Options: Toward a Greater Private Role

This paper examines and critiques the ways in which the national government supports the conservation of currently private land. The federal government regulates the development of private land through laws such as the Endangered Species Act; finances the acquisition of fee and other interests in land by federal, state, and local governmental agencies; provides grants to land trusts and other non-governmental organizations for land conservation; and uses tax laws to subsidize the preservation efforts of nonprofit conservation organizations. The federal government did not consciously plan the current mix of regulation, governmental acquisition, grants, and nonprofit leveraging. Nor has Congress or the executive branch ever thought through what would be the ideal mix: what are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, are some methods more appropriate in some settings than in others, and to what extent do the current approaches reinforce or counteract each other? This paper therefore steps back and asks the question of whether the current mix and coordination of approaches is optimal.