Quick ideas from 2 journal articles:
1) Reduce whaling by selling individual trading quotas (ITQs):
“…creating a market that would be economically, ecologically and socially viable for whalers and whales alike. Because conservationists could bid for quotas, whalers could profit from whales even without harvesting the animals. A market would therefore open the door to reducing mortality without needing to battle over whether whaling is honourable or shameful.”
Whale steak... ew. Photo by gromgull: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gromgull/974544996/
More about the concept:
“In such a system, ‘whale shares’ would be allocated in sustainable numbers to all member nations of the IWC, who would have the choice of exercising them, leaving them unused for a year or retiring them in perpetuity. The shares would be tradable in a carefully controlled global market, perhaps with the restriction that members could not trade whale products with non-members. The number of whales hunted would depend on who owned the shares. At one extreme (in which whalers purchase all the shares), whales would be harvested to the agreed sustainable level. At the other extreme (where conservationists purchase all the shares), all whales would be protected from harvest.”
Whale credit ownership is within your grasp!:
“Simple calculations based on current market prices, whale sizes and whaling costs, suggest that the per-whale profit for whalers is in the ballpark of $13,000 for a minke whale to $85,000 for a fin whale. Whale prices should therefore be within reach of conservation groups and even some individuals.”
Purchase of credits could even be more cost-effective than anti-whaling campaigns by non-profits. The authors estimate that non-profits are currently spending in the ballpark of $25 million/year on anti-whaling.
So crazy it just might work:
“Sea Shepherd, for example, estimates that its multimillion-dollar 2008 campaign saved about 350 minke whales in Antarctic waters. By our calculations, those whales could have been purchased for less than $4 million.”
Source: Costello C, Gaines S, Gerber LR, 2011. Conservation science: A market approach to saving the whales. Nature 481, p. 139-140. Published online 11 January 2012. Get it here.
2) Offset seabird by-catch mortality by reducing invasive predators (rodents) in nesting/breeding areas.The authors studied:
“[the] cost effectiveness of rodent control relative to fishery area closures for the conservation of a seabird population adversely affected by an Australian tuna fishery. We find that, in the example being examined, invasive rodent eradication is at least 10 times more cost effective than area closures. We conclude that, while this does not solve the actual bycatch problem, it may provide breathing space for both the seabird species and the industry to find longer term means of reducing bycatch.” [emphasis added]
Not everyone loves the idea:
“The potential for biodiversity offsets as a fisheries management option has received mixed, and mostly adverse, responses. Initial proposals [21,22] received severe criticism, with claims that it may do more harm than good if it diverts attention from the bycatch issue directly [23], that the model used in the analysis was flawed [24,25], or that it is limited in its application to only part of the bycatch problem [18].”
But that’s not what they meant:
“These criticisms were largely focused on the assumption that biodiversity offsets may replace the need for bycatch reduction. However, when a species is under threat and bycatch reduction technologies are not sufficient to address the problem, biodiversity offsets may be sufficient to ‘‘buy time’’ for the species while longer term solutions are sought [26]. If the only other feasible remedial measure is a fishery closure, then biodiversity offsets may be a viable option for fisheries management, even if only as a stop-gap measure while bycatch issues are addressed more fully.”
Fisheries closure to address the situation would be a big deal:
“a closure adequate to achieve the Environment Australia (1998) bycatch target would require an area closure of 785 km radius around Lord Howe Island, consistent with the observed foraging range [34]. This includes much of the area of high activity in the fishery, and may result in significant losses in total revenue.”
Give me the cost-benefit:
“Based on the location choice model results, the economic impact of the closure (estimated as reduction in fishery profits) is very specific to the underlying stock distribution, ranging from $0.6m (under 2004 stock conditions) to $2.2m (under 2007 stock conditions) in 2009–10 dollars. To place this in context, the total economic profits in the fishery in 2007–08 was estimated to be only $2m [28].
In contrast, the cost of eradicating ship rats and mice from the Island has been estimated to be only AU$0.92m (in 2009–10 dollars) [58]. These costs, while appearing relatively low, are consistent with rodent eradication costs experienced elsewhere [59]. This is a one-off cost, and assumes that re-infestation does not occur.”
Source:
Pascoe S, Wilcox C, Donlan CJ, 2011 Biodiversity Offsets: A Cost-Effective Interim Solution to Seabird Bycatch in Fisheries? PLoS ONE 6(10): e25762. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025762. Get it here.
Madsen Environmental 