Valuation of Large Carnivores and Regulated Carnivore Hunting.

Julian Eduardo Lozano Galindez*, Katarina Elofsson, Jens Persson, Petter Kjellander

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal/Conference contribution in journal/Contribution to newspaperJournal articleResearchpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Large carnivores are keystone species but represent economic costs to hunters. In Sweden, carnivore territories generally overlap
with hunting areas, and as a result, conflicts occur because of the competition for prey. The wolf, lynx, and brown bear are protected species by law but are hunted when authorities allocate
license hunting quotas. The aim of these quotas is to limit carnivore numbers. We estimate a hedonic model using ordinary least squares to address the effect of large carnivore occurrence on hunting lease prices by accounting for the presence of license hunting quotas for predators. This result is compared with the least absolute deviation estimations, which reduce the influence of outliers in the survey data. To isolate the effect of carnivores on hunting lease prices, we use snow depth and forest productivity as proxy variables for game harvest in the absence of carnivores. Our results show that lynx and wolf presence reduce hunting lease prices, but lynx presence shows higher significance and robustness. Based on median regressions, the marginal implicit price of an additional wolf territory is about 15% larger than that of an additional lynx territory. In contrast, we found no conclusive evidence that bear abundance directly affects hunting lease prices, but regulated bear hunting is found to have a positive and significant impact on hunting leases, suggesting
indirect positive net benefits of increased brown bear abundance.
Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Forest Economics
Volume35
Issue4
Pages (from-to)337-373
Number of pages37
ISSN1104-6899
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2020

Keywords

  • Hedonic pricing
  • wildlife management
  • WILDLIFE CONFLICT
  • hunting
  • Environmental valuation
  • Large carnivores

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Valuation of Large Carnivores and Regulated Carnivore Hunting.'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this