Valuing wildlife: a review of methods

The paper analyses the costs and benefits of conserving wildlife and reports part of a wider research project which aims to estimate the benefits of certain ecological types and habitats, and to compare the outcome of different techniques used to value wildlife. The authors outline a range of philosophical, technical and methodological problems in deriving cardinal measures of costs and benefits.     

Book reviews

“Water Planning and the Regions”

Edited by P. J. Purdy, R. S. A.

Discussion Paper No. 9, 1977, £1.50.

Tenant participation in council housing management; Housing Development.

Directorate Occasional Paper 2/77, DoE London, 1977.

Getting tenants involved: a handbook on systems of tenant participation in housing management; DoE London, 1977.

La politica dei servizi tra razionalizzazione e rinnovamento

Alberto L'Abate (1978)

Marsilio Editori, Padova, pp. 316

Handbook for Environmental Planning: the social consequences of environmental change.

J. McEnvoy & T. Dietz (1977)

New York, J. Wiley, pp. 323. Price £15.50

Planning and Urbanism in China

Progress in Planning Vol. 8, Part 2, Fo. 1 N. Jeffrey and M. Caldwell, pp. 97–182, 1977

Pergamen, £4.00

The European Community's Regional Fund

Ross B. Talbot

Progress in Planning, Vol. 8, Part 3, pp. 183–281

Pergamon Press, 1977

Providing the Posh Words

W. Hampton, DoE

1978. £1.50. 60pp.

Four Titles on Conservation

A Critical Bibliography of Building Conservation. John F. Smith. Mansell, London 1978. 207 pages including index. Hard back, £12.90.

Conservation and Planning. Alan Doby. Hutchinson — The Built Environment. 1978. 173 pages. Some illustrations. Paper back, £3.25.

A Study in Conservation. Winston Barnett and Cyril Winskell. Oriel Press, 1977. 45 pages, in English, French and German. Illustrated. Paper back, £3.75.

Interpreting the Conserved Environment. Working Paper No. 29. Brian Goodey. Oxford Polytechnic Department of Town and Country Planning, 1977. 65 pages. Paper back, not priced.

“Belgium”, R. Riley, £3.25, 205 pp.

“The Netherlands”, D. Pinder, £3.25, 194 pp.

“The USSR”, J. C. Dewdney, £3.25, 262 pp.

Development Strategy of Bangladesh

Nurul Islam

Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1978, 109 pp.     

Reviews

Shadrach Woods, The Man in the Street, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1975

W. Houghton Evans, Planning Cities, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1975, £7

R. Taylor, M. Cox & I. Dickens eds., Britain's Planning Heritage, London, Croom Helm for The Royal Town Planning Institute, 1975. £5.75 (hardcover) £3.50 (paperback)

Development Plan Evaluation and Robustness: Application of an Analytical Programme and a Review of Measures of Performance, Department of the Environment Research Report 5 Local Government Operations Research Unit Report C217, 1976. Gratis.

J. Appleton, The Experience of Landscape, London, John Wiley, 1975

J. D. Hunt & P. Willis eds., The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden 1620–1820, London, Paul Elek, 1976. £12.50

N. Pevsner, Staffordshire, Harmondsworth, Middx., Penguin Buildings of England Series, 1974, £3.50 (hardcover)

R. Bailey & M. Brake eds., Radical Social Work, London: Edward Arnold, 1975. £4.25 (hardcover) £1.95 (paperback)

and

The Use of Action Research in Developing Urban Planning Policy: Report of Colloquium, Bristol, June 1975 London, Department of the Environment, 1975.

M. Harloe, Swindon: A Town in Transition, London, Heinemann for the centre for Environmental Studies, 1975.

D. W. Pearce ed., The Economics of Natural Resource Depletion, London, Macmillan, 1975.

J. B. Goddard, Office Location in Urban and Regional Development

B. Fullerton, The Development of British Transport Networks

B. T. Robson, Urban Social Areas

P. L. Knox, Social Well‐Being: A Spatial Perspective

Four volumes in the Theory and Practice in Geography series, edited by J. W. House, A. S. Gouldie & J. H. C. Patten and published by Oxford University Press, 1975. All paperback at £0.90.

James A. Swan & William B. Stapp eds., Environmental Education: Strategies Toward a More Liveable Future, Halstead Press — John Wiley, 1974.

A. G. Wilson & M. J. Kirkby, Mathematics for Geographers and Planners, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975     

Contingent Valuation and Real Economic Commitments: A Private Good Experiment

The ultimate test of the accuracy of contingent valuation methods (CVM), in measuring benefits, is whether subjects will actually pay the amounts that they say they would be willing to pay in a CVM study. An experiment was conducted in which the maximum WTP of potential visitors to enter Warkworth Castle was compared against the acceptance of an entrance ticket at their stated CV price, thus providing a real monetary test of value and behavioural intention. Only 40% of potential visitors at the Castle gate were willing to make a real economic commitment following their CV WTP responses. Whilst the CVM results were found to be comparable with other CVM studies in terms of content and construct validity, they clearly failed a criterion validity test, even when the CVM survey was juxtaposed to the behavioural intention stage. CVM studies need to adopt stringent criteria in deciding the 'truthfulness' and 'legitimacy' of WTP responses, if CVM is to provide accurate and robust estimates of the value of environmental goods.     

Valuing externalities from water supply: Status quo,choice complexity and individual random effects in panel kernel logit analysis of choice experiments

Choice experiments are often implemented with choice sets including one alternative depicting the status quo. Utility from status quo is experienced by the respondent, while utility associated with experimentally designed hypothetical alternatives is only conjectured by respondents. The effects of explicitly accounting for such a difference in the econometric analysis of the data are often unreported, or limited to fitting a ‘status quo’ constant. The paper proposes a model that explicitly accounts for these effects and attempts their decomposition using data from two choice modelling exercises designed to value the provision of environmental goods. Preferences for change versus status quo are explored with standard specifications along with a less usually applied error component analysis via mixed logit. The results suggest that alternatives offering changes from status quo do not share the same preference structure as the status quo alternative, and that estimates of spread parameters in zero-mean error components can be decomposed conditional on respondents' socio-economic characteristics. It is argued that these findings have implications for practitioners and their stance towards the strategies for the econometric analysis of choice modelling data for the purpose of valuation.     

Biodiversity values for alternative management regimes in remote UK coniferous forests: an iterative bidding polychotomous choice approach

The overwhelming majority of commercial forestry in the UK comprises blanket non-native coniferous species with low biodiversity levels. The UK government is committed under the Rio Principles and Helsinki Guidelines to conserve and enhance biodiversity in British forests and woodlands. This paper assesses the passive use value of biodiversity in remote non-visited coniferous forests, and the costs of diversification and restructuring. Focus groups were employed to aid the design and framing of the study. An iterative bidding polychotomous choice format was used to elicit willingness-to-pay values for different biodiversity standards and management options. Whilst, passive use benefits exceeded costs for biodiversity conservation, considerable ambivalence in choice occurred between different levels of biodiversity. The policy relevance of the results are discussed, and compared to the practical implementation measures for biodiversity being adopted by the Forestry Commission.     

Matching and mismatching stable isotope (δ13C and δ15N) ratios in fin and muscle tissue among fish species: a critical review

Using non-lethal tissue sampling for stable isotope analysis has become standard in many fields, but not for fishes, despite being desirable when species are rare or protected, when repeated sampling of individuals is required or where removal may bias other analyses. Here, we examine the utility of fish dorsal fin membrane as an alternative to muscle for analyzing δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N ratios in two reef fish species (blue cod Parapercis colias and spotty Notolabrus celidotus) that have differing feeding modes. Both species exhibited evidence of size-based feeding from fin δ¹⁵N values, but not from muscle. Blue cod fin δ¹⁵N increased steadily throughout the sampled size range (213–412 mm fork length), whereas spotty exhibited a distinct ontogenetic diet shift at approximately 120–140 mm fork length after which size-based feeding did not occur. Fin membrane was higher than muscle in δ¹³C in both species and in δ¹⁵N for blue cod, but fin δ¹⁵N was lower than muscle in spotty. The δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N fin–muscle offsets were constant in spotty regardless of size, while in blue cod, δ¹³C was constant with fish size, but δ¹⁵N offsets increased with increasing fish size. Non-lethal sampling utilizing fin tissue can be employed to estimate stable isotope values of muscle in fishes, but it is necessary to assess relationships among tissues and the effects of fish size on isotope values a priori for each species studied. Our data indicated that fin membrane may be a more sensitive tissue than muscle for detecting size-based feeding in some fish species using stable isotopes. A critical literature review revealed inconsistencies in tissue types tested, little understanding of tissue-specific trophic shift or turnover rates, and pseudo-replicated analyses leading to erroneous postulating of 1:1 relationships between tissues.