ABSTRACT
Public natural resource management is based on the notion that management can enhance the benefits people derive from resources. Effective resource management requires many kinds of information, including knowledge of the benefits desired and how to produce and measure them. Anticipated growth in population and economic development will exert increasing pressure to use public natural resources for commercial production. At the same time, needs for those same resources to provide recreation and other amenity services, such as wildlife habitat, will increase. Balancing competing demands for commodity and amenity production requires careful evaluation and comparison of management alternatives (Kaiser et al. 1988, p. 8). Such evaluation and comparison requires measurement of the benefits and costs of each alternative in comparable terms-traditionally, dollar values.
