Conservationists hurt their cause by not emphasizing the economic virtues of parks along with their spiritual, natural, and recreational values.
BY KEN OLSON
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone," wrote Henry David Thoreau.
The 19th century contrarian's opinion of consumerism seems even more incisive today, when much that we value has a dollar sign conspicuously attached. Yet when it comes to some of the boldest manifestations of our collective wealth, the national parks, Americans see them almost exclusively as natural, recreational, and spiritual assets. Surely they are that, but we park conservationists hurt our cause by not emphasizing their economic virtues at the same time.
Acadia National Park, for example, is one of Maine's most important economic generators, even though it is by definition a public set-aside from the private market. The state's 19.8-million-acre land base is 89 percent commercial forest, a mother lode that has underpinned the state's economy for hundreds of years and produces $6.5 billion annually.
Although tiny Acadia, at just 45,000 acres of land and easements, can't compete on cash volume, the national park nonetheless pumps out more financial value per acre than do any of Maine's harvestable woodlands—pretty good for a place where all the vegetation is left upright.
In 2000, Acadia generated $3,400 per acre in goods and services, a figure derived from the work of Michigan State University professors Daniel Stynes and Dennis Propst. (The number includes about $1,200 in wages, which is about 4.7 percent of the income of a typical Maine worker.) According to the North East State Foresters Association, the state's timberlands produced about a tenth of that, or $368 an acre.
Stynes and Propst used a methodology initiated by Ken Hornback, called the "Money Generation Model," which is a pretty straightforward way to determine the economic effects of national parks. The model consists of an Excel spreadsheet into which even non-economists can insert "if/then" estimates that differ from the professors' assumptions. The model has been applied to more than 30 national parks so far, including Yosemite and Olympic national parks and Gettysburg National Military Park. It is available at www.prr.msu.edu/mgm2.
Stynes and Propst estimated that Acadia visitors spent $130 million in nearby towns for meals, room rentals, campsites, services, etc. This sum directly underwrote 2,300 jobs, and employed another 1,000 people who supplied products or services to the primary businesses. Total value of primary and secondary sales was $155 million, and personal income was $55 million, totals that created significant tax revenues.
This is not to imply that just any protected 45,000-acre tract could be so productive. Or that if you stopped cutting it, a working forest would sprout cash. Rather, the idea is that special places that are set aside from the market system can themselves create and sustain markets, especially in the immediate surroundings. Capitalism, entrepreneurship, and conservation are not a strange ménage.
Even with their intrinsic economic worth, however, parklands often benefit from value imported from nearby open space. Acadia, a seaside mountainscape, absorbs monetary value from the vast Atlantic. It works this way: The ocean, an immense plain of saltwater, is a commons, a public resource that is largely unregulated or nominally regulated. Here it functions as a buffer whose natural value is transferred in part to the core park, subsidizing Acadia's amenities. The park itself—location, location, location—is the working capital that in turn generates so much private wealth.
In the big national parks of the West, a similar transference occurs. At Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Olympic, and Rocky Mountain, for example, it's often the surrounding views of national forests and other regulated lands that add the subsidy.
The transference phenomenon works at the local level, too, as many Americans seek property near municipal open space, to, in effect, extend their backyards at minimal personal cost. In a survey conducted by the National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors (April 2002), home buyers ranked walking, jogging, and bike trails just below highway access in importance, and well above day care, shops within walking distance, basketball courts and soccer fields, and security guards at gates. With respect to conserved lands, a reversal is occurring—NIMBY (not in my back yard) is being replaced by YIMBY (yes, in my back yard).
I am one of thousands of YIMBYs who choose to live near Acadia National Park. My small home with its harbor view and ready park access has multiplied in value in seven years. The rise is specifically attributable to the nationwide demand for the amenities of nature. Like so many others across the United States who are finding ways to live close to the natural scene, I count myself spiritually and recreationally privileged to live where I do—and now economically favored as the investment has climbed, though I sought no profit in leaving the city for rural Maine.
By design, the Stynes-Propst model does not attempt to measure such benefits to park neighbors. Nor does it quantify the value of ecosystem services. For example, Mount Desert Island's drinking water is captured and largely purified by the park at little cost to residents. Think of this benefit as a "givings."
It is a hopeful sign that Americans increasingly recognize parks as repositories of history, subjects of great art, sanctuaries for species, inspiration for a literature of celebration (and of anger and lament), places of connection to the creation, DNA sinks, ground zero for the human soul, and worthy objects of philanthropy. People today may have a greater appreciation for nature's unpriced values than Thoreau's contemporaries did.
Consumers who believe that personal enrichment cannot possibly arise from something they cannot own miss great life satisfactions. But even we who constantly rediscover the profound riches of letting things alone, and for whom the most vital harvests from our national parks are non-consumptive, may be shortchanging ourselves. Whether or not we admit it, the yields are also financial, supporting communities, states, and our material lives. For the sake of the national parks, we need to proclaim a yet rounder view of their economic productivity, to fortify arguments for preserving the intangibles. The story needs to be told. Too bad Thoreau isn't around to write it.
KEN OLSON is president of Friends of Acadia, which created the first private trails endowment in national park history. He contributed the foreword to First Light: Acadia National Park and Maine's Mount Desert Island, photographs by Tom Blagden, Jr., text by Charles R. Tyson, Jr., forthcoming from Westcliffe Publishers.
