Additionality in Conservation Easements Programs: Grassland Easements in the Prairie Pothole Region

Jeffrey Savage, Roger Claassen, Vincent E. Breneman, Chuck Loesch and Ryan Williams

No 170422, 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Conversion of native sod (grassland) to cropland in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is threatening important breeding habitats for migratory birds. About 50 percent of North American ducks are produced in the grasslands of the PPR, even though this habitat accounts for only ten percent of duck breeding territory. Once lost, native grassland habitats are difficult to reconstruct. To protect these habitats, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) holds permanent easements prohibiting grassland-to-cropland conversion or wetland drainage on more than 3.5 million acres. The USDA also holds easements against grassland conversion.We estimated the additionality of grassland easements purchased in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota from 1997—2010. Higher additionality implies that a larger proportion of eased grasslands would have been converted to another use in the absence of the easement. Using propensity score models, our estimate of additionality for all easements is 3.4 percent for the years 1997-2010. For relatively high quality land, which is more likely to be converted, our estimate of additionality is 6.4 percent. When measured over longer periods, additionality will higher because more of the eased land would have been converted to another use.

Keywords: Environmental; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/170422/files/AAEA_Easements_2014_poster.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea14:170422

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.170422

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().