69,552 research outputs found

    The WTP for property rights for the Giant Panda: can a charismatic species be an instrument for conservation of natural habitat?

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    The paper presents the results from a stated preference study to address issues concerning the potential for using flag-ship species, such as the Giant Panda, to purchase the property rights for the conservation of natural habitat. The study finds, first, that there is clear WTP for acquiring the property rights for panda habitat. The nature of this demand is found both convincing and logically coherent in that it is an increasing function of land (at a diminishing rate). Secondly, the study decomposed the elicited values into genetic stock, animal welfare and implicit biodiversity values. The results show that the latter type of value consist of almost half of total value implying that the Panda is in fact a potential instrument for greater biodiversity conservation. Thirdly, the study shows that these implicit biodiversity values are dependent on the preservation of the flagship species itself, implying that the panda is not only a potential instrument for habitat conservation, but a necessary one. Finally, the extent to which the flagship approach can be capable of contributing to wider biodiversity conservation is discussed

    ISER Working Paper

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    In communities that largely depend on the extraction of natural resources, attitudes towards conservation and development may seem at odds or particularly rigid. With an unprecedented wealth of natural capital, a growing mining sector, strong oil and gas industry, and a politically conservative population, Alaska serves as a case study to measure such attitudes. This research was motivated by a lack of primary ecosystem service valuation studies in Alaska that could be used to assess the public’s perceived value of ecosystem services in order to guide future land use decisions and incentivize land use decisions that minimize negative externalities. A choice experiment was conducted with 224 households in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the fastest growing region in Alaska and one of the fastest growing regions in the U.S. Rapid development with few restrictions has led to changes for local ecosystems particularly important to salmon, negative effects on access related to recreation and tourism, and caused conversion of valuable farmland. Study results show that attitudes and values vary regarding future land use and economic development efforts. On average, policy action to improve conditions for local salmon stocks are most valuable to local residents followed by protecting farm and ranch lands as well as public access to recreation sites. Conversely, residents show negative preferences towards rapid population growth and developing local mining, oil and gas, and timber resources but support developing a professional and technical services sector. The quantified welfare changes related to different development scenarios show that focusing on conserving valuable ecosystem services is in the public’s best interest

    Successful strategies implemented towards the elimination of canine rabies in the Western Hemisphere

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    Almost all cases of human rabies result from dog bites, making the elimination of canine rabies a global priority. During recent decades, many countries in the Western Hemisphere have carried out large-scale dog vaccination campaigns, controlled their free-ranging dog populations and enforced legislation for responsible pet ownership. This article reviews progress in eliminating canine rabies from the Western Hemisphere. After briefly summarizing the history of control efforts and describing the approaches listed above, we note that programs in some countries have been hindered by societal attitudes and severe economic disparities, which underlines the need to discuss measures that will be required to complete the elimination of canine rabies throughout the region. We also note that there is a constant threat for dog-maintained epizootics to re-occur, so as long as dog-maintained rabies "hot spots" are still present, free-roaming dog populations remain large, herd immunity becomes low and dog-derived rabies lyssavirus (RABLV) variants continue to circulate in close proximity to rabies-naïve dog populations. The elimination of dog-maintained rabies will be only feasible if both dog-maintained and dog-derived RABLV lineages and variants are permanently eliminated. This may be possible by keeping dog herd immunity above 70% at all times, fostering sustained laboratory-based surveillance through reliable rabies diagnosis and RABLV genetic typing in dogs, domestic animals and wildlife, as well as continuing to educate the population on the risk of rabies transmission, prevention and responsible pet ownership. Complete elimination of canine rabies requires permanent funding, with governments and people committed to make it a reality. An accompanying article reviews the history and epidemiology of canine rabies in the Western Hemisphere, beginning with its introduction during the period of European colonization, and discusses how spillovers of viruses between dogs and various wild carnivores will affect future eradication efforts (Velasco-Villa et al., 2017)

    Concepts of Drift and Selection in “The Great Snail Debate” of the 1950s and Early 1960s

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    Recently, much philosophical discussion has centered on the best way to characterize the concepts of random drift and natural selection, and, in particular, on the question of whether selection and drift can be conceptually distinguished (Beatty 1984; Brandon 2005; Hodge 1983, 1987; Millstein 2002, 2005; Pfeifer 2005; Shanahan 1992; Stephens 2004). These authors all contend, to a greater or lesser degree, that their concepts make sense of biological practice. So, it should be instructive to see how the concepts of drift and selection were distinguished by the disputants in a high-profile debate; debates such as these often force biologists to take a more philosophical turn, discussing the concepts at issue in greater detail than usual. A prime candidate for just such a case study is what William Provine (1986) has termed “The Great Snail Debate,” that is, the debate over the highly polymorphic land snails Cepaea nemoralis and Cepaea hortensis in the 1950s and early 1960s. This study will reveal that much of the present-day confusion over the concepts of drift and selection is rooted in confusions of the past. Nonetheless, there are lessons that can be learned about nonadaptiveness, indiscriminate sampling, and causality with respect to these two concepts. In particular, this paper will shed light on the following questions: 1) What is “drift”? Is “drift” a purely mathematical construct, a physical process analogous to the indiscriminate sampling of balls from an urn, or the outcome of a sampling process? 2) What is “nonadaptiveness,” and is a proponent of drift committed to claims that organisms’ traits are nonadaptive? 3) Can disputes concerning selection and drift be settled by statistics alone, or is causal information essential? If causal information is essential, what does that say about the concepts of “drift” and “selection” themselves

    Genome scan of Diabrotica virgifera virgifera for genetic variation associated with crop rotation tolerance

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    Crop rotation has been a valuable technique for control of Diabrotica virgifera virgifera for almost a century. However, during the last two decades, crop rotation has ceased to be effective in an expanding area of the US corn belt. This failure appears to be due to a change in the insect's oviposition behaviour, which, in all probability, has an underlying genetic basis. A preliminary genome scan using 253 amplified fragment-length polymorphism (AFLP) markers sought to identify genetic variation associated with the circumvention of crop rotation. Samples of D. v. virgifera from east-central Illinois, where crop rotation is ineffective, were compared with samples from Iowa at locations that the behavioural variant has yet to reach. A single AFLP marker showed signs of having been influenced by selection for the circumvention of crop rotation. However, this marker was not diagnostic. The lack of markers strongly associated with the trait may be due to an insufficient density of marker coverage throughout the genome. A weak but significant general heterogeneity was observed between the Illinois and Iowa samples at microsatellite loci and AFLP markers. This has not been detected in previous population genetic studies of D. v. virgifera and may indicate a reduction in gene flow between variant and wild-type beetles

    Conserving tropical biodiversity via market forces and spatial targeting

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    The recent report from the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity [(2010) Global Biodiversity Outlook 3] acknowledges that ongoing biodiversity loss necessitates swift, radical action. Protecting undisturbed lands, although vital, is clearly insufficient, and the key role of unprotected, private land owned is being increasingly recognized. Seeking to avoid common assumptions of a social planner backed by government interventions, the present work focuses on the incentives of the individual landowner. We use detailed data to show that successful conservation on private land depends on three factors: conservation effectiveness (impact on target species), private costs (especially reductions in production), and private benefits (the extent to which conservation activities provide compensation, for example, by enhancing the value of remaining production). By examining the high-profile issue of palm-oil production in a major tropical biodiversity hotspot, we show that the levels of both conservation effectiveness and private costs are inherently spatial; varying the location of conservation activities can radically change both their effectiveness and private cost implications. We also use an economic choice experiment to show that consumers’ willingness to pay for conservation-grade palm-oil products has the potential to incentivize private producers sufficiently to engage in conservation activities, supporting vulnerable International Union for Conservation of Nature Red Listed species. However, these incentives vary according to the scale and efficiency of production and the extent to which conservation is targeted to optimize its cost-effectiveness. Our integrated, interdisciplinary approach shows how strategies to harness the power of the market can usefully complement existing—and to-date insufficient—approaches to conservation

    Scars of early non-employment for low educated youth: evidence and policy lessons from Belgium

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    This paper investigates whether the early experience of non-employment has a causal impact on workers’ subsequent career. The analysis is based on a sample of low educated youth graduating between 1994 and 2002 in Flanders (Belgium). To correct for selective incidence of non-employment, we instrument early non-employment by the provincial unemployment rate at graduation. Since the instrument is clustered at the province-graduation year level and the number of clusters is small, inference is based on wild bootstrap methods. We find that one percentage point increase in the proportion of time spent in non-employment during the first two and a half years of the career decreases annual earnings from salaried employment six years after graduation by 10% and annual hours worked by 7% (unconditional effects). Thus, any policy that prevents unemployment in the first place will be beneficial. In addition, curative policies at the micro level may be required, depending on the actual cause of the scar

    A Multi-perspective Analysis of Carrier-Grade NAT Deployment

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    As ISPs face IPv4 address scarcity they increasingly turn to network address translation (NAT) to accommodate the address needs of their customers. Recently, ISPs have moved beyond employing NATs only directly at individual customers and instead begun deploying Carrier-Grade NATs (CGNs) to apply address translation to many independent and disparate endpoints spanning physical locations, a phenomenon that so far has received little in the way of empirical assessment. In this work we present a broad and systematic study of the deployment and behavior of these middleboxes. We develop a methodology to detect the existence of hosts behind CGNs by extracting non-routable IP addresses from peer lists we obtain by crawling the BitTorrent DHT. We complement this approach with improvements to our Netalyzr troubleshooting service, enabling us to determine a range of indicators of CGN presence as well as detailed insights into key properties of CGNs. Combining the two data sources we illustrate the scope of CGN deployment on today's Internet, and report on characteristics of commonly deployed CGNs and their effect on end users
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