ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes what is known about the economic value of the wildland resources and discusses the significant role this information can play in developing an economic argument for wildlife and wildland conservation. The inability of individuals or groups to appropriate the value of wild resources may be due to the public good characteristics of the resource. The value of ecosystem services are difficult to appropriate and, like species and habitat existence, tend to be under supplied as a result. The discipline of environmental economics is rapidly expanding our knowledge of the economic value and importance of species and habitat existence, ecosystem services and genetic resources. Species and habitat existence prove to be the most amenable to classification as public goods. Efforts to transfer resources from developed to developing countries in order to account for unappropriated existence values will need to confront free-riding in order to initiate broad-based co-operative action at the international level.
