Preface
I decided to write this essay during the summer of 2011,
while I was up in Northern New Brunswick. On the way up to our field sites one
morning, we say a juvenile (probably less than a month old) moose dead on the
side of the road, as well as a deer and multiple porcupines, skunks, and
crows. Later that day, on our way home, we pulled
over to try and herd a mortally wounded young black bear off the highway while
we called the local ranger office. It
was a cub, probably less than 4 months old, with one eye lying in a puddle of
blood on the roadside and barely enough strength in his broken little body to
crawl. It was a tragedy to
behold. As I watched, it struck me that this little bear had no value to anyone
but me and my crew – the truck driver didn’t even slow down! I couldn't help but wonder if there was some way to put this implied value into numbers, so here's what I came up with.
Four & twenty per pound
What is the value of wildlife to us in Canada? At first glance, it seems like an open-ended,
esoteric question that could keep ecotourism professionals, hunters, biologists,
and animal rights activists going for a long time. In fact, as a professional conservation
biologist, I will admit that I have spent a considerable amount of time pondering
this very thing. But that time was spent
unnecessarily. I realized today that
most wild animals are worth between $20 and $20,000 to us. My explanation for this is forthcoming, but
before you get too caught up in considering the reasons for this, I’ll mention a few of the more common estimates we learn about as conservation biologists.
Hunters might suggest that a game animal is worth hundreds
of dollars. This money is not paid for
the animal specifically, but for the licence (both to hunt and to use the
weapon, depending where you live), the weapon, the ammunition,
locally-purchased supplies, the cost of meat or trophy preparation and value of
the food one gets from the animal. Ecotourism
leaders (which can include hunters, depending on the type of ecotourism) would
probably agree with the hunters, but might raise the value to thousands of
dollars, once you factor in the money spent on accommodations, transportation,
and guides. Biologists might bring the
total value of a wild animal up to tens of thousands of dollars, once ecosystem
services are factored in. Ecosystem
services include things like redistribution of nutrients (e.g., salmon and
other anadromous fish), keeping potentially destructive species under control
(e.g., sea otters, aerial insectivores), or pollinating important crops (e.g.,
bats and birds). A passionate animal
rights activist might say that wild animals are priceless, because they are
individuals, each with their own genetic makeup, ecological role, and (perhaps)
even their own personality, which can never be truly replaced. .
The cost that is implied by our actions (which speak louder than words) varies somewhat, based on the size of the
animal and the number of them that live in an area, but I maintain it is
somewhere between $20 and $20,000.
Why? Let me explain. (get ready for some sloppy calculations...)
On average, while driving
on highways in Canada (I’ve lived in B.C., Alberta, and New Brunswick and
travelled in several other provinces as well), I’ve noticed that I see a dead
large animal (deer, bear, moose, etc.) about once every 3 hours. Mid-sized animals (porcupine, coyote, etc.)
are seen dead on the roadside at least every hour, and small animals (crows,
rabbits, squirrels, etc.) are not really even worth counting, because you
usually lose track after a few dozen over the course of a 2 hour trip. So let’s say that, over the course of a
9-hour day of driving (at ~100 km/h), you see three large animals, nine
mid-sized ones, and about 100 small ones dead on the roadside.
If I recall correctly, the average truck driver (cube van to
semi-tractor trailer) is paid $25.00 per hour, which is about $225 for a 9-hour
day. And let’s assume that to drive one
of these trucks costs about $1.00 to $2.00 per km, or about $900 to $1800 for a
900-km day (I’ve never gauged the fuel economy on a semi, but have driven
cube-vans, and so feel confident in the lower limit). For the sake of argument, let’s assume that
these figures represent an optimal combination of driver paid time and fuel
economy, and minimizes the markup on the goods we purchase on a daily
basis.
Rodgers and Robins (2006) suggest that moose can be detected
at sufficient stopping distances for passenger vehicles at between 60 and 90
km/h, depending on the lights, vehicles, and drivers, during the night. Given that a full load on a delivery truck
adds significant momentum, I think it is fair to say that the truck would need
to go a fair bit slower to avoid hitting animals at night. I myself have seen large trucks simply keep
driving as if nothing has happened after hitting deer, moose, or bear, during
the day and at speeds of 80-100 km/h. Data
published by the US Department of Transportation suggests that animal-vehicle
collisions only occur (or only cause significant enough damage to be reported)
above speeds of 25 mph (40 km/h). Surely a semi-truck moving at 40 km/h could
stop for a moose or bear on the road?
But in our fast-paced society, would we ever consider
reducing highway speeds to such a low number that we reduced animal-vehicle
collisions to zero? What would such a
change cost us? Well, therein lays the
answer to my original question. If we
reduced the speed limit on all roads to 40 km/h, it would take approximately
2.5 times as long to drive 9 hours, so the truck driver would have to be paid
$562 dollars to deliver that same load.
Furthermore, fuel economy would likely decline, increasing costs by a
factor of about 1.5 (estimated from my own experience with the difference
between city and highway driving in trucks), or $1350-$2700. The total cost
increase would be $787.50-$1237.50 per load.
Presumably, the number of trucks driving on a particular 900
km stretch of road would vary with road location, road size, and a number of
other things – but for simplicity’s sake, let’s use some simple numbers to
estimate truck density. There are approximately 156,700 transport trucks inCanada, and I think it’s a safe bet that they’re not ALL moving all
the time, since drivers need to sleep, eat, load, unload, etc. Let’s assume 9
hours of each day is spent driving for each truck (again, to match up nicely
with calculations), so we can then estimate that ~58,800 are on the road at any
given time. Since Canada has about 900,000 km of road, that means the average
truck density on any given stretch is ~0.065/km. Driving at 40 km/h for 9 hours
covers 360 km, and over a 360 km stretch, there should be approximately 23
trucks. Given that most trucks do 2-way hauling, let’s assume they’re all full
for now.
With 23 loads, the average increased cost of slowing down to
40 km/h would be $18,420-28,945, and this would likely be passed onto us, the
consumers. I’m not sure what the
increased cost would look like on a per-person, per-week basis, and it would
certainly be a worth-while exercise for an economist, but let’s assume there
are no hidden costs here, and that it can be directly translated into the
differences in transportation cost.
So the three large animals, nine mid-sized ones, and 100 or
so small ones that would be seen in the course of a 9-hour highway-speed drive are
collectively worth between $18,427 and 28,945, or an average of about $23,686.
If we distribute this money on a per-pound basis (~$24 per pound, using the
average sizes of 300 lbs, 30 lbs, and 3 lbs for the size-classes), and
extrapolate based on the average weight of several representative adult
animals, we find that an adult moose is worth about $19,000, a black bear is
worth about $6000, a coyote is worth about $700, and a crow is worth about $20.
Remarkably, this amount seems to match with the ranges that I initially
suggested – in the hundreds to thousands of dollars’ range, but it’s probably
closer to the lower end.
I’m not arguing that we should reset the highway speed
limits to 40 km per hour, or that wildlife is definitively worth about $23 per
pound. In fact, I’ve almost certainly
overestimated the implied value here, because those crashes with large animals
do damage to our vehicles as well, and vehicles other than transport trucks are
certainly involved in many of these collisions, thereby potentially doing
damage to our own health – both of these factors would reduce the animal’s
implied value, so my estimate here should be seen as an upper-limit. And while
I believe that we should be using highway transportation considerably less (due
to negative impacts of greenhouse gases), I’ll leave that for another
post. What I’m arguing is that the
IMPLIED value of wildlife in North America (as implied by our actions) is probably
different from the THEORETICAL values we are taught in economics, philosophy,
or biology classes. Motor-vehicle
accidents are a huge cause of mortality for most wildlife populations, and
depending on where you live, they can be the primary killer. Our current socio-economic system does not
place significant value on wildlife, and that per-pound value seems only to be
declining further as we build more roads, increase demand for consumer goods to
be delivered by truck, and purchase more vehicles.
Does the implied value match the theoretical one you lean
towards? If not, does the mis-match
between theoretical and implied values make us hypocrites? Maybe, but
more likely it just reflects the disconnect we have between our ordinary 'operating'
scale, and the larger temporal and spatial scales that include wildlife and
wild places around us.
Now here’s the real take-home message: our actions, even
such apparently disconnected actions as setting highway speeds for the
transportation system we all rely upon, have consequences for the ecosystems in
which we live. We need to stop thinking of ourselves as isolated entities and
start thinking of ourselves as part of a larger community that includes wild
animals and places. When a bear cub or crow is killed on the highway, the
ecosystem is diminished because of it. Perhaps if everyone thought this way, we
would not need to continue placing price tags on wildlife, because their value
to us (personally and collectively) would be crystal clear.
No comments:
Post a Comment