The Economics of Threatened Species Conservation: A Review and Analysis

Stabilizing human population size and reducing human-caused impacts on the environment are keys to conserving threatened species (TS). Earth's human population is ~ 7 billion and increasing by ~ 76 million per year. This equates to a human birth-death ratio of 2.35 annually. The 2007 Red List prepared by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) categorized 16,306 species of vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and other organisms (e.g., lichens, algae) as TS. This is ~ 1 percent of the 1,589,161 species described by IUCN or ~ 0.0033 percent of the believed 5,000,000 total species. Of the IUCN’s described species, vertebrates comprised relatively the most TS listings within respective taxonomic categories (5,742 of 59,811), while invertebrates (2,108 of 1,203,175), plants (8,447 of 297,326), and other species (9 of 28,849) accounted for minor class percentages. Conservation economics comprises microeconomic and macroeconomic principles involving interactions among ecological, environmental, and natural resource economics. A sustainable-growth (steady-state) economy has been posited as instrumental to preserving biological diversity and slowing extinctions in the wild, but few nations endorse this approach. Expanding growth principles characterize most nations' economic policies. To date, statutory fine, captive breeding cost, contingent valuation analysis, hedonic pricing, and travel cost methods are used to value TS in economic research and models. Improved valuation methods of TS are needed for benefit-cost analysis (BCA) of conservation plans. This Chapter provides a review and analysis of: (1) the IUCN status of species, (2) economic principles inherent to sustainable versus growth economies, and (3) methodological issues which hinder effective BCAs of TS conservation.

Making Learning Visible: Peer Review and the Scholarship of Teaching

This is the promotional brochure from the March 2004 national conference, Making Learning Visible: Peer Review and the Scholarship of Teaching. This conference was hosted by the UNL Peer Review of Teaching project and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Ethyl tert-Butyl Ether and Methyl tert-Butyl Ether: Status, Review, and Alternative Use Exploring the Environmental Issues of Mobile, Recalcitrant

Petroleum products leaking from under ground storage tanks have raised concerns regarding the quality of ground water resources, The concerns about the environmental behavior and rate of MTBE as an oxygenated additive prompted this iuvestigation to explore the technical characteristics of MTBE in comparison to ETBF. Evaluation of the existing literature suggests that ETBE has more favorable characteristics than MTBE. Findings in this research suggest that ETBE is a technically sound oxygenated octane enhancer, which can help refiners meet specificatios for cleaner burning gasoline.