The Role of Government Agencies in Wildlife Abundance, Decimation, and Recovery, with Dominic Parker

Notable Quotes

• State-level environmental agencies are key drivers of natural resource management in the United States: “It can be really fruitful to dig in and analyze the history of state-level regulations.” (6:42)
• The extreme decline of many species of US wildlife results from the lack of private property rights and public regulations to prevent over-hunting and overexploitation of natural resources: “1850–1900 is sometimes called the age of extermination. The slaughter of buffalo or bison is well known. I mean, this is staggering: from over 50 million bison prior to 1850, down to maybe a few thousand by 1890 … The ubiquitous white-tailed deer that’s everywhere was almost driven to extinction—maybe from 35 million in 1700 to less than 500,000 in 1900 … Why did we get this decline?” (10:35)
• The dominant funding model of state wildlife agencies contributed to the recovery of wildlife populations: “[Wildlife management agencies] are primarily funded by hunting and fishing license sales and federal taxes on fishing and hunting equipment, so most of it is tied to how many hunters you have and what they’re spending … I think this funding system is the main reason why game populations rebounded so well since agencies formed … Deer hunters wanted more deer, and because they fund agencies, they got more deer.” (26:08)

Top of the Stack

• “The Creation and Extent of America’s First Environmental Agencies” by Dean Lueck and Dominic Parker
• The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth Century America by Louis S. Warren
• “The Problem of Social Cost” by Ronald Coase
• Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History by Dan Flores
• The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors by Erika Howsare

The Full Transcript

Margaret Walls: Hello, and welcome to Resources Radio, a weekly podcast from Resources for the Future (RFF). I’m your host, Margaret Walls. My guest today is Dr. Dominic Parker. Dominic, who goes by Nick, is the Anderson-Bascom Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Nick’s research is pretty wide ranging, but most of it has an emphasis on environmental markets, property rights, and the intersection of law and economics, with a topical focus often on natural resources and conservation, fisheries and wildlife, and related issues.

In addition to Nick’s position at Wisconsin, he is also the Ilene and Morton Harris Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, where he co-directs two projects; Renewing Indigenous Economies and Markets vs. Mandates for the Environment. So, Nick is a busy guy.

Today, we’re going to chat with him about a paper he’s written with a coauthor, Dean Lueck, entitled The Creation and Extent of America’s First Environmental Agencies. This paper is forthcoming in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, or JAERE, as we sometimes refer to it, which is the flagship journal in our field of environmental economics. This is a really fun paper to talk about, because it’s rich in history, which I really like. It’s got a lot of really interesting historical facts and, of course, economics.

In it, Dean and Nick talk about the formation of state wildlife agencies, which were really the first environment-focused government agencies in the United States. The paper talks about why in general government agencies form—which is something maybe we just take for granted, that we have them—but they talk about why we create these agencies and why they grow or shrink over time. And it dives into the details of these wildlife agencies and the factors that led to their formation and size. So, today, we’re going to talk about some cool environmental history and political economy, so stay with us.

Hello, my friend Nick. Welcome to Resources Radio. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Dominic Parker: Well, thank you, Margaret. It’s so good to be here.

Margaret Walls: So, you know that before we dive into this topic today—which I’m really excited to talk about—I want to ask you to talk about your background and your personal journey. Tell our listeners how you got into environmental and resource economics, Nick.

Dominic Parker: I think my journey started when I was a 19-year-old kid living in Michigan, and I didn’t have much of a career plan. I was taking college classes, but I didn’t have a major and I honestly didn’t know if I would bother finishing. I did like the outdoors, and I had this book of beautiful photos from national parks. I had never been west of the Mississippi—never been on an airplane actually—but I was captivated by all these landscapes and landmarks. So, I decided to apply for summer jobs, and I was accepted at several national parks: Yosemite and Olympic and Crater Lake, maybe some others.

I took a job at Yellowstone National Park, honestly, largely because I could hitch a ride with an acquaintance who happened to be going to Montana.

Margaret Walls: Oh, wow.

Dominic Parker: I mean, I was a broke 19-year-old. I had a car. But, I mean, it was a clunker, and there was zero chance it could make it past the Mississippi. So, I had this just stimulating summer at Yellowstone, and it exposed me to these fascinating natural resource issues. I mean, this was 1994, and the park was recovering from these massive fires from 1988, so you could see the forest ecology recovering. And the park was preparing for wolf reintroduction, which was just a huge deal at the time. The place was buzzing with excitement and controversy over that. I mean, wolves had been absent from the park for decades.

So, I returned from that experience to college in Michigan, and I took a public economics class that I loved, and I was able to write papers for it about the economics of forest management, economics of wolf reintroduction, and just trying to combine what I learned at Yellowstone with what I was learning in economics. And I was hooked. I guess that’s when I became an environmental and resource economist. I have stayed hooked on those topics ever since. I just want to say it’s funny how—maybe you have had these experiences—but this is a really random event where I happened to get a ride to Yellowstone in Montana.

I mean, that changed the whole course of my life. I lived in Montana for many years. My first job was at Montana State University. Many of my mentors were there. In fact, Dean Lueck, one of the coauthors, was faculty at Montana State, and I met him early in my life through that. So, I mean, that was really all because that was where my acquaintance could give me a ride.

Margaret Walls: Wow. That’s a great story. I love that, and I was going to point out to listeners that, yes, you were at Montana State and have worked on wildlife issues. So, that clearly was formative. That’s great.

All right. Well, let’s dive in a little bit, Nick. As I said in my introduction, the study focuses on state wildlife agencies. Give our listeners some background basics about these agencies, if you would, because maybe not everybody knows about them. What do they do? Are they regulatory? Does every state have one? Just talk about that a little bit.

Dominic Parker: It’s a good question, because we often think of national environmental agencies like the US Environmental Protection Agency or the US Fish and Wildlife Service. But, in fact, every state has an agency to manage environmental assets, including water, minerals, forests, parks, fish, and wildlife. And the state agencies are actually much older, and sometimes, they’re more important. So, if you want to understand the economic origins of administrative agencies, it can be really fruitful to dig in and analyze the history of state-level regulations.

So, state wildlife departments are America’s first environmental agencies. They were created between 1870 and 1930. Today, they set and enforce hunting and fishing regulations. So, Margaret, if you want to fish or hunt, you need to buy a license, and you need to follow the rules that the agency sets. And this is true even if you’re on private land.

They also do a little bit of managing non–game species like songbirds, lizards, and bats. But, it’s mainly these hunted animals. They’re funded primarily by hunting and fishing license revenue. There’s also a federal tax on hunting and fishing gear that goes to the state agencies. Some get a little bit of taxpayer general funds from the state, but that’s fairly rare.

I want to say one more thing that I think is important here is this US system of state wildlife ownership and regulation. It exists similarly in Canada, but it’s different than much of the world, where wildlife is actually owned privately. So, in many countries, if you want to hunt or fish, you need landowner permission, but you don’t need a public license. So, one of our goals is to shed light on why this US system is different than other parts of the world, and also when private control or public control is better. We’re broadly interested in that.

Margaret Walls: Yeah, that’s great. We’ll circle back to that, I think. That’s really helpful, Nick. Can you tell a few of the anecdotes or something about the historical setting that you write about in this paper? Because you have some nice descriptions of what the Europeans found when they came to North America when it came to wildlife. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Dominic Parker: They were absolutely astounded. I mean, keep in mind, they had left a continent that had been depleted of lots of wildlife species. So, they arrived in America, and even on the eastern shoreline in the 1600s, 1700s, all these animals we think of as being associated with the American West were actually common in the East. There were numerous moose and turkey and bear and wolves, beaver, jaguars, and river otters.

Margaret Walls: Wow.

Dominic Parker: These settlers in Virginia just marveled at “woods abounding with deer and songbirds of every kind.” An author in Massachusetts wrote of “passenger pigeons so thick I could see no sun.” One of the estimates was up to two million in one flock of pigeons. These observations of abundance get repeated in the 1800s as explorers and settlers traveled west to the Mississippi. Lewis and Clark wrote in their journals of antelope, buffalo, and elk in every direction. And explorers in the Pacific Northwest—they wrote of being able to cross the Columbia River on the backs of salmon. That’s how thick the river was with salmon.

Margaret Walls: Wow. That’s so cool. I think I’ve seen mention of that before. Okay. But things started to change, and I think the populations of many species began to drop off dramatically. So, talk about that a little bit. What are some of the declines that you’ve seen that have been documented?

Dominic Parker: Yeah. The populations started to wane in the early 1800s, but the really dramatic changes were in the late 1800s: 1850–1900, which is sometimes called the age of extermination. The slaughter of buffalo or bison is well known. I mean, this is staggering: from over 50 million bison prior to 1850, down to maybe a few thousand by 1890. Those passenger pigeons that could cover the sun were driven to extinction. The last bird, whose name was Martha, died in a Cincinnati zoo in 1914. And here’s one that is actually most stunning of all: The ubiquitous white-tailed deer that’s everywhere was almost driven to extinction—maybe from 35 million in 1700 to less than 500,000 in 1900. So, just decline.

Why did we get this decline? Well, I’d say the proximate cause was clearly over-hunting, especially by commercial hunters. The big cities—Philadelphia, New York, Chicago—had major markets for fur, meat, hides, feathers. The restaurants were selling venison and geese. Vendors sold pelts, hats, robes, and skin. Subsistence hunting was also a factor. You had these logging and mining camps that fed off elk and venison. But the underlying problem was that wildlife was open access. There were some regulations on the books, but local law enforcement was insufficient and generally not interested in encountering armed hunters in the woods to enforce these laws.

Trespass laws were weak, so market hunters could essentially traverse private land and kill animals. And the human population growth was rapid. There were two big immigration waves in the late 1800s, which also put pressure on wildlife.

Margaret Walls: That’s really fascinating and disturbing. So, you mentioned, Nick, that the first attempt to address these problems that you just described involved private wildlife management, including the formation of private hunting clubs. So, tell us how these worked. I guess they didn’t do much to stem the tide of these declines, right?

Dominic Parker: Yeah. I mean, it’s not quantitatively documented, but there are a lot of anecdotes of how these things operated. So, there were recreational hunting clubs in the East. They leased private forested land and farmland, and they created rules about hunting: seasons, bag limits, gears. They were doing what agencies do today. They charged members fees. They used that revenue to lease land, to pay for private law enforcement. They used the revenue to stock the depleted areas with animals. The private clubs in New York and New Jersey leased maybe one million acres. They issued private licenses.

A few organizations—one called the New York Association for Protection of Game—employed private detectives to roam stalls in New York City, and they were trying to find dealers of illegal wildlife products—just like you might see today in Chatuchak Market in Bangkok, Thailand, for example. This kind of thing.

So, I would say the private efforts worked well in pockets to stem decline, but in general, they had limited success in making a widespread dent. Dean and I think they had limited success because there were two main obstacles to private management.

The first was that America in the 1700s–1800s consisted of small private parcels interspersed with a lot of land that was yet to be claimed. So, that made it difficult to coordinate privately for sufficiently large tracts of land to support real wildlife management. And then the state also wasn’t particularly helpful—the states and the national courts—because trespass laws were basically nonexistent or weakly enforced. So, norms at the time were to treat wildlife as public property. People were coming from Europe, and they wanted open access to the wildlife resource. And so even if you set up these private efforts, courts could likely deem your exclusive hunting clubs illegal. So, those were some obstacles.

Margaret Walls: Yeah. Oh, that’s interesting. Okay. So, then we turn to a different alternative. These government agencies began to be established. This is what you all set out to look at in your study, analyzing statistically when these agencies formed, what their size was, and so forth. So, you’re looking back in history. You had to put together some historical data. Talk about that a little bit. What did you go about assembling?

Dominic Parker: Oh, this was—I hate to say it, but we started this project probably over 15 years ago, not full time, but intermittently, we stuck with it. And the reason it took so long was because assembling the data set was a fair amount of work. And, really, the biggest challenge was cataloging the timing of creation and the evolution since formation of all these agencies. So, not just fish and wildlife agencies, but ones for forestry, parks, water, and air quality, because we wanted that information, too. Today, these agencies are often embedded in broad departments like Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources or Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management.

But back then, when they were created, there were narrow commissions, like Ohio’s Fish and Game Commission that was established in 1886. The first narrow wildlife commission showed up in 1878 in New Hampshire, and the last one showed up in 1932 in Mississippi. So, our goal and the reason we were collecting data is because we wanted to test an economic theory to explain differences in the timing of agency formation. Why did the agencies in New Hampshire and Ohio form early? In Mississippi, why did the agency form late? And so, just a little spoiler alert: it’s not because of population density or simple population pressures. That’s actually a pretty weak explanation, we find statistically.

We also wanted to understand why sizes of agencies evolved over time, so we collected data on the budgets of every state since about 1930. That’s about the earliest we could get. So, our goal was to test competing ideas and economics. Does the administrative state arise and grow in response to private market failure? Or does its creation and growth reflect more like rent seeking by certain constituents? Those are two big competing ideas and economics about why you get government regulation.

To try to sort this out, we collected historical data on three main things. First, land ownership and fragmentation at the time: things like average farm size and how much land was open access with open trespass rules, to try to measure the challenges of private management and the transaction costs.

We also collected data on state administrative capacities: the existence and size of other regulatory agencies—like for agriculture and for health, and so on—to get a sense of how beefed up the state was to administer more things like wildlife management. Then we collected data on state demographics: What was the population, how much was in cities versus rural, and how much of that population was from immigration versus US-born residents?

Margaret Walls: Yeah. Okay. That’s interesting. And just a little side note on that. You told me separately—and we were talking about this paper, Nick—that there was an interesting class and cultural warfare against immigrants around wildlife at this time. So, tell our listeners a little bit about that.

Dominic Parker: Definitely. The decimation of wildlife coincided with big immigration surges, particularly from Southern and Eastern Europe. Everyone that came to America was an immigrant, but these surges in the late 1800s were Southern and Eastern Europeans, a lot of Italians in particular. There was a lot of clash and nativism towards them. Some were accused of being relentless subsistence hunters.

There’s this great historical book by Louis Warren called The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth Century America, and in it he describes all the complaints from US-born locals of immigrants in Pennsylvania. He has these quotes that the immigrants from Italy were hunting down songbirds en masse and cooking them just like they cook chickens, and that’s what people were complaining about. It actually reminds me of recent complaints of Haitian immigrants eating the geese of Springfield, Ohio. It was that kind of acrimony.

But, there was actually a bigger conflict over commercial hunting, which native-born Americans participated in, as did immigrants. But, the immigrants drew scorn from blue-blooded conservationists like William Hornaday, who particularly disliked Italians, and he had nasty things to say about them. I won’t repeat them here. This acrimony led to really violent conflict at times and discriminatory hunting laws: laws that were set up by the state that explicitly discriminated against immigrants. So, Dean and I included data to test for the possibility that wildlife agencies were created to protect access for native-born citizens and to exclude immigrants from the resource.

Margaret Walls: Wow. That’s so interesting. Okay. Tell us a little bit about the first set of findings in the study then when you did your statistical analysis. You look at the timing of the establishment of these agencies, looking at some of these factors you just described. What did you find there?

Dominic Parker: I think I can summarize them with four main findings, Margaret.

First, agencies were created earlier in states with more private land that was uncultivated and unenclosed. The reason that’s important is because the law was such that that land was basically open access, given trespass laws and norms at that time. So, this finding is consistent with there being higher demand for public regulation when private enforcement is particularly difficult. So, we found earlier agencies when trespassing was hard to enforce.

The second finding is that agencies were created earlier in states where farm sizes tended to be small and fragmented. This finding is consistent with there being higher demand for public regulation when contracting or transaction costs of private regulation are high. So, having all these small parcels raised the transaction costs among owners because it meant larger numbers of landowners would have to coordinate on setting hunting rules and monitoring compliance. That’s just hard to do as the number of people involved gets higher. Ronald Coase made that point in his famous article on the problem of social costs, so that’s really a reflection of what he said long ago.

Two other findings. The third is: agencies were created earlier in states that already had lots of administrative capacity. So, if you already had health agencies and agricultural agencies, you’re a lot more likely to create a wildlife agency. This is consistent with larger government creating momentum for more regulation and government administration—just kind of like momentum of the administrative state to grow as it has more capacity.

And then there’s some weaker evidence that agencies were created earlier in states with more immigrants, as I talked about a moment ago. This is consistent with regulatory bodies being used to preserve resources to established constituents like native-born Americans.

All of this, I would say, is generally consistent with a market-failure explanation for government provision of environmental conservation. But, some of the results are also consistent with there being some rent seeking and tendency of the administrative state to grow, which it did.

Margaret Walls: Yeah. That’s interesting. So, you also looked at the size of these agencies. You mentioned that you were able to collect budgets for them from, I think, sometime in the 1930s. Tell us about that set of results then, Nick. What did you find there? Was it similar? Or what did you find?

Dominic Parker: Yeah. I’d say it’s complementary. I mean, many of the same factors that I just described correlate with larger budgets in modern times. For example, there was faster growth—or more significant growth—in the budgets of agencies in states that had declining average farm sizes. That’s consistent with there being more growth in the demand for public management where landowners coordination costs are rising.

So, in some states, there were just changes in the types of crops that were grown and changes in the corporate composition of ownership. So, you get some variation in farm sizes, and that’s pretty strongly correlated with how big these agencies became.

We also find that agency budgets are larger in states with lots of public land today: federal land and state land. That’s pretty straightforward, but I think it just shows that demand for public management is high when private parties really can’t own the habitat, as is the case with public land.

Margaret Walls: Yeah. Also, you mentioned this thing about US farm sizes, which I think now are growing. So, what does this mean for the future of wildlife management? Aren’t farms getting bigger?

Dominic Parker: Yeah. I mean, that’s my understanding of the trend of the last 20–30 years. If you extrapolate from our results, it means there’s going to be more private management of at least hunting regulation and less need for the state agencies to do what they’ve been doing in that regard.

So, you might get a system that looks a little bit more like these other countries where there’s more private control, like South Africa, for example. But the agencies are also trying to cater to demand for non–game species: songbirds, lizards, bats. I mean, there isn’t really market demand for them that large landowners are providing, necessarily. I would imagine you’re still going to have, in any case, demand for some public agency management of these species, because they’re more like a public good than game species, which are more private.

Margaret Walls: Right. Everybody’s birdwatching these days.

Dominic Parker: They are.

Margaret Walls: Okay. Let me squeeze in one last question here, Nick. You don’t really talk about this a lot in this paper, but I know you’ve written before about how these agencies are funded, which you mentioned at the beginning, a little bit about the fishing and hunting licenses and so forth. And I’ve written about it a little bit, too. We’re talking about it for national parks as a model, perhaps. So, do you mind if I ask you a quick question about this?

Dominic Parker: Not at all. It’s really interesting and important.

Margaret Walls: Yeah. Go back to how these agencies are funded and how wildlife management in general is funded. What are your thoughts about this funding model, this way of doing things?

Dominic Parker: Yeah. They’re primarily funded by hunting and fishing license sales and these federal taxes on fishing and hunting equipment, so most of it’s tied to how many hunters you have and what they’re spending. I think that funding model has historically been good, but it’s getting outdated and has some problems today.

It’s generally good, I think, to directly link funding to the use of natural resources. It creates good incentives for public managers to listen and respond to the demands of those who are using and paying for the resource, so that’s a good thing. I think this funding system is the main reason why game populations rebounded so well since agencies formed. I don’t think I mentioned it, but deer populations went from 35 million in 1700 to 500,000 in 1900. Well, guess where they’re at today? 35 million or so, which is stunning.

Why did that happen? Well, deer numbers surged, I’d say, because the incentives of these agencies were aligned with the incentives of deer hunters. Deer hunters wanted more deer. And because they fund agencies, they got more deer. But now, we’re in a situation where, frankly, I’d say there’s too many deer, at least from the perspective of non-hunters. In many parts of the country, overabundant deer cause all kinds of damage. They’re involved in deer-vehicle collisions. And they probably are spreading diseases like chronic wasting disease and maybe Lyme disease. They damage crops and gardens, and so on.

Why do we have so many deer? I mean, I think it’s probably because of the funding model. It sets up agencies to respond to narrow constituencies and ignore some of the broader interests of state citizens. For example, if you had more wolves, who are predators of deer, you would reduce some of these problems. In some of my research with colleagues, we found that wolves reduce deer-vehicle collisions. You could also have commercial hunts to reduce deer populations. But, recreational deer hunters are generally opposed to this, and they’re the ones who foot the bill. They are the ones who are paying for the management.

In the language of an economist named George Stigler, it seems this funding model has caused wildlife agencies to be captured a bit by the constituents that pay. And so, as you say, you could model this differently and try to broaden the funding base. You could try to include birdwatchers and hikers, and I think that would be good. It’s hard to do. The trick is not to lose these excellent features of pay-for-use funding, like a dedicated tax on outdoor gear. I know you’ve written and thought a lot about these kinds of things, Margaret. I think it could do this.

To prove durable, it seems the agencies would have to be convinced that their investments in non-game would bring them more revenue that would work, and the consumers paying the tax would have to be convinced that the revenue would be used in places they want to recreate. If you do those things, I think you would improve the funding model for sure.

Margaret Walls: Yeah. A topic for another day, I think.

Dominic Parker: Indeed. Indeed.

Margaret Walls: Another podcast.

Dominic Parker: Indeed.

Margaret Walls: All right, Nick. We have to close our podcast, and we do that with our regular feature we call Top of the Stack, where we ask our guest to recommend a book or an article, a movie, a podcast, anything really that caught their attention. So, I’m going to ask you that. What is on the top of your stack, Nick?

Dominic Parker: Oh, man. I’ve been reading all kinds of interesting stuff from economists, and I’m tempted to give shout-outs to my economist friends who are doing great work. But, I’m going to stay on theme here.

I’ll say, lately, I’ve been trying to learn more about two ubiquitous American wildlife species, and those are coyote and deer. And I want to say these aren’t the most charismatic or majestic animals out there. They’re not as charismatic as grizzly bears or wolves, but coyotes and deer are just everywhere, and they’re amazing survivors. I’ve been wanting to learn more about them.

So, I recommend two books about these species. There’s a fantastic book by Dan Flores called Coyote America. It digs into their natural history and the pop culture about coyotes, and there’s a fascinating book called The Age of Deer by Erika Howsare. I’ve learned so many interesting things reading these books. They’re great conversation starters with people of all ages, because it turns out almost everyone has a good personal story about an encounter with a coyote or a deer, I think. And so, I would take a look if you have the time.

Margaret Walls: Yeah. That’s great. Thank you so much for those recommendations.

All right, Nick. It’s been a pleasure having you on Resources Radio, talking about the first environmental government agencies in the United States: state wildlife management agencies. I’m going to look forward to seeing your article with Dean in print. Thanks so much for taking time to come on the show.

Dominic Parker: Thank you, Margaret. It was fun to be on the show, and I appreciate what you’re doing with it.

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