Species at Risk: Using Economic Incentives to Shelter Endangered Species on Private Lands

Protecting endangered species of animals and plants is a goal that almost everyone supports in principle-but in practice private landowners have often opposed the regulations of the Endangered Species Act, which, they argue, unfairly limits their right to profit from their property. To encourage private landowners to cooperate voluntarily in species conservation and to mitigate the economic burden of doing so, the government and nonprofit land trusts have created a number of incentive progr...