Property rights of landholders in non-captive wildlife and prospects for conservation

In order to reduce the rate of human-induced biodiversity loss of wild species, it has become increasingly important to stem this loss on private and tribal lands and to find effective policies to do this. Some writers believe that granting landholders commercial property rights in wildlife might be effective in dealing with this matter and result in the sustainable use of wildlife. This paper explores this view using economic theory. In doing so, it takes into account the total economic valuation concept. While granting of commercial property rights is found to be effective for conserving some species, it is predicted to be a complete failure as a means of conserving other species. In addition, particular attention is given to the economics of the utilisation and conservation of non-captive fugitive (or mobile) wildlife. The economic theory involved is contrasted and compared with that for the exploitation of open-access resources.

Characterizing mixing and measurement in quantum mechanics

What fundamental constraints characterize the relationship between a mixture rho = Sigma (i)p(i)rho (i) of quantum states, the states rho (i) being mixed, and the probabilities p(i)? What fundamental constraints characterize the relationship between prior and posterior states in a quantum measurement? In this paper we show that then are many surprisingly strong constraints on these mixing and measurement processes that can be expressed simply in terms of the eigenvalues of the quantum states involved. These constraints capture in a succinct fashion what it means to say that a quantum measurement acquires information about the system being measured, and considerably simplify the proofs of many results about entanglement transformation.