I agree with Dan Simons who stated that:
>The process of assigning an abstract dollar value to them (or any other
>non-commodity resource) sounds a lot like asking how many apples is an orange
>worth. No matter how carefully you construct your answer, it doesn't have
>much meaning. Please be careful - someone might think you really know.
In this light, I have a few questions:
In order to place an abstract value on the Red Cockaded Woodpecker, do we
not need to place a value on the insects it eats? I assume a woodpecker
that ate 2 tons of insects would be worth twice as much as a woodpecker that
ate 1 ton of insects. However, some insects may not have the same value as
others. For example, is Ips grandicollis (southern pine engraver) worth the
same as Dendroctonus frontalis (southern pine beetle)? If southern pine
beetle does more damage to pines than Ips, should we give more economic
weight to the southern pine beetle? Therefore, if one woodpecker ate 1 ton
of southern pine beetle, would we give it a higher "value" than a woodpecker
that ate 1 ton of Ips?
This raises another question. Should we assign insects like Ips and SPB
negative values or positive values? It would make some sense if we give
them negative values, and therefore we could total the amount of negative
values that a woodpecker eliminates. If we give the insects positive
values, then there will be a point where x tons of Ips would be worth the
same as 1 Red Cockaded Woodpecker.
If we gave SPB a negative value, I assume that some other insects would be
given positive values. Some predaceous insects (i.e. Lady Bugs) would be
given positive values and, perhaps, some endangered insects. This way we
could give negative weight to those woodpeckers that ate large amounts of
insects that we humans liked.
{Please be careful - someone might think you really know.}
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