Economics of Wilderness Resources

Abstract

In the USA there has been an explosion in the numbers of visitors to 'wildernesses' such as the Grand Canyon and the High Sierra, which is causing considerable distress for naturalists and environmentalists interested in wilderness preservation, and for National Park and Forest Service administrators caught in the cross currents of political pressure to make public lands freely available for recreation, while attempting to maintain them in their natural state. Control theory and stationary general equilibrium theory are used to study a model of certain characteristics of public recreational resources, and several types of equilibrium are illustrated and compared. It is suggested that rationing, by deliberately increasing the cost of access to scenic resources, may be society's best option.

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