Florida’s Endearing Manatees

By assigning economic value to the manatee, the costs and benefits associated with conserving and protecting them and their habitat can more effectively compete in the marketplace. Just as the Endangered Species Act assigned value to social benefits or Eleanor Ostrom demonstrated how governing the commons could turn public goods into private ones, assessing the measurable benefits of a resource makes both environmental and economic sense. The manatee’s charisma, combined with a recognized economic value, has helped us maintain a better relationship with the species and moved the manatee and its habitat to the frontlines of Florida’s conservation agenda. Their increased numbers and expanding human fan base have made them the face for improving ecosystem biodiversity and water quality, as well as encouraging better land use decisions along Florida’s rapidly developing coastline. Effective branding by well-respected institutions like Save the Manatee Club and The Ocean Conservancy has made saving the manatee a cause that transcends the local and hopefully has made co-existing with the gentle giants in their habitat something each one of us will readily choose to do.

The Quirky Moose

Admittedly, moose hunting generates money through the sale of licenses and permits and the hiring of guides, yet it potentially is tipping the scale against moose survival in all states but Alaska. Creating either a use or nonuse value that supports a revenue stream based on tourism and an ancillary moose-themed market could provide an alternative way to help preserve the moose. Moose are charismatic species due their visual rareness, relation to northern landscapes, and reputation as an all-American animal. Valuing the moose through the marketplace as an important capital asset makes protecting it and its habitat a more logical choice than hunting it beyond its capacity to recover ever could be.

The Ecotourist Question

The ecosystem services model as a valuation tool for cultural capital relies on human well-being as the metric for assigning nature a value that makes sense in a world full of competing choices. If the entire added value of a forest that includes wildlife habitat, recreation, and carbon sequestration is calculated, its continued existence as an intact forest ecosystem can more effectively compete against alternative uses that could either destroy the forest or diminish its services to us. Without a measurable value determined through marginal cost-benefit analysis and the consumer’s willingness to pay, however, the forest ecosystem would be assigned a dollar value of zero, making development the easy default choice. Since outdoor recreation in nature contributes to our well-being, it becomes one of the tools we can use to assign nature value. Responsible travel as ecotourists involves taking visitors into natural areas to educate them about a region’s natural and cultural heritage, as well as to sustain the well-being of local people. Ecotourism can change our relationship with the natural world, as well as teach us how to be better tourists.

Creating Wild Capital from the Ecosystem Services Model

By failing to assign nature value in our current Anthropocene, the opportunity costs of diminishing biodiversity are not recognized in the marketplace, leading to significant negative consequences for both nature and humanity. Polluting water, destroying habitats, or exterminating species should each lessen nature’s value, but if nature has never been assigned a value, that loss is not recognized and development becomes the default. The words “wild capital” remind us that nature should be viewed as an asset like any other, and that in doing so we are better equipped to appreciate its long-term worth. Since the ecosystem services model (ES) ties together the ecological, social, and economic needs of human well-being, it is well situated to assign nature value and from that make a case for nature as natural capital. To assist in policy decisions, ES has offered a path based on the language of economics, making it appealing to economists, while to conservationists, it has turned an argument about the negative effects of development on wildlife into a more fruitful dialogue about how beneficial conservation is for human well-being. ES is also compatible with efforts at sustainability and the goals of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

Conclusion

The ecosystem services model plays a critical role in explaining how natural resources can be turned into wild or natural capital. The logic of economics relies on weighing the measurable values of competing choices when making decisions. Through that process, if we value the functions and products of ecosystems that benefit humans or yield welfare to society, we become better stewards of the natural world. For this book’s purposes, ecotourism as a cultural service clearly demonstrates how consumers of outdoor recreation see value in activities like wildlife viewing or hiking in nature. For wild nature to persist, however, it must be part of a larger system that is bound not only by biological ties, but by economic and cultural incentives as well. Since the boundaries that determine human and wild nature’s space are rather fluid and rarely entirely isolated from the other, using ecotourism to help assign nature value is logical. By offering individuals the opportunity to see nature through a variety of lenses, nature can be protected and preserved in different degrees. If nature and wildlife remain outside our human experience, however, inspiring the love and concern necessary for its survival becomes more and more difficult.

Green Fire in a Wolf’s Eyes

The wolf as both an endangered species and an animal with abundant charisma returned to the West at a critical time. If the reintroduction of the wolf had not occurred when it did, one of the greatest wildlife conservation success stories in history would not have become a reality. For many, our willingness to co-exist with the restored wolf in the lower forty-eight states has moved the American relationship with wildlife even further away from the divisive Western worldview to a more Japanese worldview that sees us and wild nature as points on a continuum. This change is embedded in the debunking of the “bloodthirsty wolf myth” and an improved awareness of a predator’s right to exist, encouraged by more appropriately valuing its presence against other competing values. For the red wolf, its reintroduction to northeastern North Carolina has provided a powerful educational tool for engaging the public and improving their ecological and economic understandings of the value of wildlife. The return of a charismatic predator like the wolf to the lower forty-eight is not only changing the narrative regarding this animal, but has given us the opportunity to assign its presence tremendous value for future generations.

Post-Jaws Sharks

In recent years, with better education and a more transparent approach to public engagement, our knowledge and understanding of the shark have improved such that coastal visitors and locals alike are more likely to see the presence of sharks as not only an indicator of ecosystem health, but also as an economic opportunity. Human responses like those that occurred in 1916, or even in the 1960s, have changed drastically. Rather than rely on ignorance and the distorted “man-eater” myth and cinematic tropes of shark violence, people are beginning to recognize that the predatory nature of sharks is natural and that sharks have greater rights to the ocean than tourists do. The appeal of shark ecotourism suggests that even though sharks are feral and can be scary, our unfamiliarity with them makes our curiosity trump that fear. This amazing shift in attitude has made the move away from hunting sharks with dynamite, guns, and longlines to hunting sharks with cameras a logical one. By rebranding the shark and seeing it as natural capital, their presence in the world’s oceans can be understood as another asset we must tend to.

Introduction

By looking at nature through a social science lens, we can begin to see the natural world as an asset critical to our well-being and from that learn to appreciate its value. This appreciation can inspire more of us to protect nature as we pursue our own self-interests. Pairing anthropology with economics encourages people to see the connection between sound environmental stewardship and the flow of benefits we receive from that stewardship, ultimately challenging cultural attitudes towards biodiversity, ecotourism, and our natural heritage. To make these connections, this book relies on five North American animals to demonstrate how, by assessing their role as keystone species and assigning nature a value, people can change their own relationships with our natural world.

America’s Iconic Bald Eagle

Bald eagles have returned from the brink of extinction and today serve as a reminder to our collective memory of not only what we can do to destroy a species, but what we can learn from its near loss. In our environmental ignorance, we almost lost the symbol of our identity as Americans and replaced it with a value system that saw our dominion over nature as a legitimate and proper role for mankind. Today, we more readily appreciate that our well-being is closely tied to that of nature and without intact ecosystems we all lose. Our willingness to pay to maintain populations of bald eagles is an important tool for assigning this charismatic bird value. Bald eagles now soar in places as varied as the rivers of Alaska to the highly developed coastline of the Chesapeake Bay, but in both locations, their presence reminds us of what we could have lost if we allowed the bald eagle to “blink out” and what we have gained from their conservation success.

The Question of Charisma

Charismatic fauna can play a critical role in how we navigate the challenges of natural resource preservation and conservation. Their highly relatable appeal makes them ideal candidates for conservation campaigns, branding, and marketing, while their easy identification is valuable for ecotourist experiences. The revenue generated from both ecotourism and conservation campaigns (donations indicate a willingness to pay) can help assign a recognized value to our natural world and all its natural capital, making conservation rather than development our economic choice. For many people, the plight of highly recognizable charismatic species embodies the biodiversity crisis, as relying on their appealing faces as proxies for habitat protection makes sense. Their presence has the potential to generate ecotourist dollars that can be used to preserve and protect ecosystems and habitats beyond their own terrains, creating an umbrella effect. The benefit of utilizing charismatic fauna as surrogates for larger ecological issues is how effectively these animals can be used to protect the landscapes and biodiversity of entire ecosystems.