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Willingness to Pay for Willamette Basin Spring Chinook and Winter Steelhead Recovery
Citation:
Papenfus, M. AND M. Weber. Willingness to Pay for Willamette Basin Spring Chinook and Winter Steelhead Recovery. Federal Salmon Caucus Meeting, Portland, OR, July 21, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of presenting this work to the Federal Salmon Caucus is to inform other government agencies of the work that EPA/WED is conducting in environmental economics and valuing ecosystem services. Valuation of salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest is relevant to understanding the benefits associated with many different types of management and policy decision associated with protecting and improving large numbers and different types of waterbodies across the Pacific Northwest. I was asked to present at the bimonthly meeting of the Federal Salmon Caucus after presenting this same work at the Salmon Recovery Conference in Vancouver, WA this past May, 2015.
Description:
Two of the primary goals of conducting economic valuation studies should be to improve the way in which communities frame choices regarding the allocation of scarce resources and to clarify the trade-offs between alternative outcomes. The challenge of quantifying public preferences is particularly relevant to salmon conservation efforts in the Pacific Northwest. Despite the deep cultural importance of salmon to the citizens of the Pacific Northwest, there is a remarkable lack of valid empirical economic studies quantifying this importance to the general public in the region. This is conspicuously true for the Willamette Basin, home to more than half of the state of Oregon's human population and to the few remaining spring-run Chinook salmon populations in the state. There are many competing uses for Oregon's waters and decision-makers are often faced with trade-offs on how to allocate resources to accommodate these uses. Many of these uses conflict with salmon preservation and to date there is not adequate information to quantify societal values for salmon conservation. We have developed a stated preference nonmarket valuation study to estimate the general Oregon population's preferences and values to protect and restore Chinook salmon and winter steelhead populations in the Willamette Basin. Valid estimates of the public value for salmon will be useful in numerous policy contexts and will support numerous government agencies and community organizations to factor the value of salmon preservation benefits into their strategic policy and financial decisions.