Willingness to pay for the conservation and management of wild geese in Scotland

In past times wild geese were an important resource, providing a source of meat, grease for lubrication and waterproofing, and feathers for bedding and arrow flights. Today, with the sale of goose meat no longer allowed in law, the only current market for geese is commercial shooting of non-endangered species such as the pink-footed goose. However, there are other benefits associated with geese which are not priced in the marketplace, but are valued. For example, some people positively value the opportunity to observe geese in the wild (a use-value), while others may take pleasure from simply knowing that they exist (a non-use value). These benefits cannot be provided by conventional markets because it would be prohibitively expensive to exclude people from watching geese and impossible to exclude them from caring about geese. In recent years a number of techniques such as Contingent Valuation (CV) and Choice Experiments (CE) have been established to establish the monetary values of non-market benefits. These techniques aim to measure the willingness to pay (WTP) of beneficiaries through the establishment of hypothetical markets

Has climate change taken prominence over biodiversity conservation?

The growing prominence of climate change has led to concerns that other important environmental issues, such as biodiversity loss, are being overshadowed. We investigate this assertion by examining trends in biodiversity and climate change coverage within the scientific and newspaper press, as well as the relative distribution of funding through the World Bank and the National Science Foundation, since the late 1980s. Our indicators substantiate some of these fears. To prevent biodiversity from becoming a declining priority, conservationists need to analyze the discourse surrounding climate change and determine how it has become the predominant environmental topic. In addition, given the common drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change, we argue that win–win solutions must be sought wherever possible. Conservationists need to be proactive and take this opportunity to use the mounting interest in climate change as a flagship to leverage more support and action to prevent further biodiversity loss

Editor\u27s Corner

From the Outgoing Managing Editor: The start of 1985 signals the transfer of the last vestiges of my former position as executive director of the Academy to Jim Macmillan, who now takes on the role of managing editor of Academy publications