Hannah Downey joins the podcast this week to help us focus on the environment as it relates to land, water, and wildlife, and the role of the free market to provide solutions to conservation. We’ll get into the importance of land management to prevent wildfires, the value of public versus private ownership of land, and highlight some out-of-the-box solutions that have worked to maintain the proper balance of wildlife in the U.S.

Hannah Downey is the policy director at The Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), helping to bring free-market solutions to environmental policy challenges. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street JournalThe HillThe Salt Lake Tribune, and local papers. After being introduced to PERC in college, she pursued the ideas of free-market environmentalism and became a PERC research assistant. She graduated from Montana State University with degrees in economics and political science in 2015.


TRANSCRIPT

Beverly Hallberg:

And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s episode, we focus on the environment as it relates to land, water, and wildlife, and the role of the free market to provide solutions to conservation. We’ll get into the importance of land management to prevent wildfires, the value of public versus private ownership of land, and highlight some out-of-the-box solutions that have worked to maintain the proper balance of wildlife in the United States. And we have a great guest to break it all down for us. Hannah Downey is joining us. She is the policy director at The Property and Environment Research Center, known as PERC. And they help to bring free-market solutions to environmental policy challenges. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, The Salt Lake Tribune, and local papers. She graduated from Montana State University with degrees in economics and political science in 2015. And it’s a pleasure to have you on She Thinks today.

Hannah Downey:

Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me.

Beverly Hallberg:

So I know you are joining us from the great state of Montana. You are in a state that has had a lot of spotlight due to the very popular show Yellowstone. And so I wanted to start with just a basic question of how has this show brought issues to light, such as ranchers and land and property? And of course, there’s lots of battles for land in the show. What has the show meant for Montana and the work that you do?

Hannah Downey:

Well, I definitely like to say Montana is just as beautiful as the show makes it out to be, the mountains, the rivers, the communities. It’s truly an incredible place to live and work and be able to focus on environmental issues. The show certainly overdramatizes things. We don’t regularly have gunfights in our backyard over cattle versus bison, and fencing controversies and all those good things. But the issues that are raised are very real here. We do have a lot of controversy over how landscapes should be managed, different jurisdictions, changing preferences. We’re seeing a lot of people actually coming to visit our area because of the show, and seeing a lot of the themes that play out about development and tourism versus traditional agriculture, and how all that interacts with not only our culture, but our landscapes and the resources that we rely on.

Beverly Hallberg:

And I think the show has brought to light something really interesting when we think about the environment, and that is, yes, there is the issue of climate change that it discussed quite a bit. And people fall on different sides on whether or not it exists and, if it does, what should be done? But there’s this other side, which is: How do we deal with the land and the environment? So that obviously is the wildlife, but that’s the land itself. When you think about the work that you do at your organization, what would you say are some of those challenges, and how you see the environment and that important term, conservation, how we conserve what we’ve been given?

Hannah Downey:

Definitely. It’s one of the most complicated and fun issues to work on, certainly. So maybe a little bit of background, PERC, or the Property and Environment Research Center, we’ve been in Bozeman for over 40 years, started as a research organization, and really started asking ourselves, the group of economists that founded it, asking: If markets can provide all these other things we want, and as humans want more and more environmental amenities, healthy water, clean air, all of these things, why can’t markets provide that? So that’s kind of PERC’s foundation, and we started looking at it from, we don’t necessarily need government or regulation in order to provide these things. Markets can do much of that. So we’re based on three basic principles, kind of looking at incentives and how ownership — people take care of the things that they own and have a reason to invest in the longevity of those resources.

Accountability — people can’t just come in and harm or pollute or damage something that you own without having to be responsible and accountable for that. And finally, the idea of trade — that if you have a resource, you’re able to exchange that with other people. And you can profit by buying or selling and providing a quality product in the form of an environmental amenity. So that’s a little bit of a background on kind of how we think about these things. Our work focuses on land, water, and wildlife, looking at everything from endangered species, to wild horses, to wildfires, to national parks. So we kind of run that whole spectrum, but ultimately always asking ourselves, “How do we have support, private, market-oriented approaches to conservation rather than a heavy hand of government and regulation?”

Beverly Hallberg:

And I think an interesting aspect to this is, so often, people think of the great outdoors as something that is untouched, that should just be left the way it is. But you talk a lot about maintaining our forests. So I want to talk about this in relation to forest fires. We’ve had an increase, or what some have said an increase in fires across the country. I’m a former resident of California, I grew up there, actually had family in Paradise, California, where there was that tragic fire about two or three years ago, where I think it was roughly 80 people lost their lives. And some say that this is because of climate change. Others talk about the need for forest maintenance. What is the responsibility of us, whether that is through the federal government, whether that is through those who own private land, to maintain the forest? Why is that so needed?

Hannah Downey:

Definitely. And Beverly, you totally hit on it. We need to be conscious of how we treat our forests and wildfire risk because there are so many human impacts to it, right? We see every year in Bozeman we joke it’s fire season, or smoke season. Year-round, you can look out my office window behind me here and be able to see the beautiful mountains of Bozeman. But about July, August, the smoke rolls in. It’s hard to breathe. You can’t see things. There’s a lot of air pollution. And that’s from fires that are even far away. Then when you have one that’s in your own community, you’re having to evacuate. Homes are being burned. You’re destroying watersheds. You’re destroying wildlife habitat. You’re destroying recreational opportunities.

So there’s a huge human impact here and a huge environmental impact to having these wildfires. And certainly, climate does play a part in this conversation, but forest management is so essential in thinking how we can reduce wildfire risk and ensure that we don’t have those human impacts, things like prescribed burns, careful thinning, restoring our watersheds. Those are all just common-sense approaches that require active management to reduce our wildfire risk and ensure that our forests are healthy so that we don’t suffer those consequences.

Beverly Hallberg:

I was looking up some of the things that you had written on this topic, and believe in one of your articles you said that more than 80 million acres of federal forest service land needs to be treated and maintained. Do you find that when you see that this needs to happen, has there been a lot of pushback from those who claim that we shouldn’t touch the forest at all because of climate change? You have to let it go. Have you been met by people who claim environmental reasons to not maintain these forests?

Hannah Downey:

Certainly, there are some in that camp who think that the best thing to do with our forests is never touch them. However, it is actually very encouraging to see over the past few years, I think you referenced Paradise and the catastrophes that we’re seeing from these fires. There’s more and more consensus that we do need to actively manage our forests. And it’s really encouraging to see the forest service come out with that. And even examples, the Bootleg fire, for example, this past year, it was burning through federal forests that weren’t managed, and it was a catastrophic fire. And then it hit a chunk of land that was actually managed by The Nature Conservancy, and they had done a lot of this active management, thinning, prescribed burns, those sorts of things. And the fire still moved through, but because of the management, it moved through at a much lower intensity, which allowed it to kind of be brought back under control and not have those terrible impacts.

It’s important to note, fire is a natural feature on our landscapes, and we do need to have some of that. But preventing it from getting catastrophic and having those terrible implications for humans is so important. Where we’re really focusing our work, now that there’s more and more consensus that some of this work is needed, is how do we reduce the regulatory barriers so that this work can actually get done on the ground? How do we promote public-private partnerships? How do we allow states to lead on many of these things? How do we reduce the legal and regulatory barriers and reduce litigation risk, so that these projects can actually be played out on the ground?

Beverly Hallberg:

Let’s talk about that a little bit. So obviously, you have the federal role when it comes to different land in the country. There’s what states own, there’s what individuals own. What does an ideal partnership look like? And do we see that ideal partnership taking place in many places in the country? Or has this been fraught with a lot of litigation and a lot of strife?

Hannah Downey:

Litigation is definitely a huge issue, especially here in Montana. It’s a mounting challenge and one that we really need to overcome. An area that I think we’re seeing some progress on, definitely room for a lot more improvement, but we’re seeing some pilot projects being tested out that should be applied more broadly across the nation through things like Good Neighbor Authority, which allows states to actually get in and manage the federal forests within their state boundaries, and ultimately receive some financial compensation, either by selling the timber or being paid back by the federal government.

Another thing that we’re seeing is really cool financial tools evolved. The Blue Forest is a conservation group, and they’re actually operating in California, where they were able to bring together a lot of stakeholders who realized they would financially suffer if a fire rolled through the Tahoe National Forest and destroyed their watersheds, destroyed homes, destroyed all of these things that they would then have to go back in and reclaim after the fact. So they were able to put forward money upfront to actually get in and do some of these forest management projects in an area where the forest service had gone through all the legal barriers and regulatory barriers to say, “We want to do something on the landscape here. How do we bring in those private partners and private dollars to get some of that done?”

So we’re seeing some of these examples happening with great success. Now comes the challenge of: How do we scale it up so it’s not just of incentives, but instead, a trend across our forests?

Beverly Hallberg:

And so what do you say to somebody who thinks that the answer to keep, to conserve our land, is to have the federal government in charge? They may make the claim that, well, if the free market is in control, then it comes down to the bottom line. It comes down to money and not to just take care of our land regardless. What do you say to those who think that it should be the federal government to take care of all of this, and that any type of land that we deem of value should not be held by private entities?

Hannah Downey:

I think we just need to look at what private entities are already doing, and in many cases, doing better than federal or state or even local governments. Ranchers here in Montana are some of the best stewards of open space. When we look at, for example, elk migrations, these beautiful animals that are so central to kind of how we think of Montana, as they migrate out of Yellowstone National Park and across the landscape, they actually rely on private agricultural lands for about 80% of their winter habitat, so these private lands are essential to their wellbeing. And so these landowners are already doing incredible work in having that open space amidst risk of financial costs, risk of development, all of these things. The private lands are so essential in all these areas.

And so then kind of what comes next and should be in the conversation, instead of saying, “Well, how can federal government come in and maybe take over?” Say, “How can we support these landowners who are providing this public environmental good?” Aldo Leopold actually said it great, he has this great line of saying, “Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.” So at PERC, one of the things we’ve done is, as an organization, we’ve partnered with another local community group and have actually gone out and partnered with ranchers to say, “We would like to lease a part of your ranch so that the elk can use it as habitat in the winter. Instead of running your cattle on a specific pasture, about 500 acres, during this winter when the elk need this habitat so much, we’re willing to come in, and compensate, and lease that acreage for the elk instead of the cattle and provided a fence there.”

Those are the sort of solutions. We were able to get that done in a few months, rather than years of negotiating with federal programs and dollar amounts and everything. We were able to just go in and get that done as a private group supporting a private landowner. And I think that’s a lot of what the future of conservation holds, is partnering with those private landowners, viewing them as partners and not targets in all of this.

Beverly Hallberg:

And reading just some of the things that you have focused on in your work, something that I thought was just fascinating was learning more about the wild horse population in the country, how there are a lot of them.

Hannah Downey:

Definitely.

Beverly Hallberg:

It’s outpacing what is actually beneficial to the land. And so I want you to share a little bit about this adoption program, which has helped. And this being an example of a free-market solution to a problem that we’ve seen.

Hannah Downey:

Certainly. So for those in the West, we know that wild horses aren’t exactly how they’re often portrayed, right? So many times, you think of mustangs or wild horses, and you think of this beautiful, magnificent creature galloping across the western rangelands. And sure, that’s a very romanticized vision of the West, but the reality is we have far too many wild horses on far too little rangeland, and they’re destroying rangeland ecosystems. Horses, wild horses, are capable of doubling in population about every four years. So we have a huge problem here if we aren’t able to get it under control. They’re competing with native species, endangered species even, for water, food, with each other. We’re seeing horses starving to death on the range.

As a huge horse lover myself, I can’t be okay with watching these animals starve, die, and completely deplete this ecosystem. So what PERC thought about is: Well, how do we get these animals off the rangeland? And right now, the program is that these animals are taken off the rangeland and they’re held in federal holding facilities. And each animal costs the taxpayer about $50,000 over the course of its lifetime to be sitting in these holding facilities. And so we said, “Well, let’s get these animals adopted out into private homes.” And the previous approach was that you had to actually go and bid and pay the federal government money to take this liability off of their hands. The horses are a liability.

So PERC’s idea was: Well, instead of spending $50,000 for the federal government to hold this animal for its entire life, what if we paid adopters $1000 to help cover the initial costs of training, or feed, or transportation, or any of those challenges? So now we’re seeing a huge increase in wild horse adoptions out of these holding facilities. And in paying people to take these animals, give them a good home, provide a good living for them, a good house for them, we’re able to see the cost reduced to taxpayers, more animals moving off of the range and into private homes. Ultimately, it won’t fully solve the problem. There’s so many other things that need to happen. But it’s one piece of the equation that a basic market transaction can help solve.

Beverly Hallberg:

And so just final question for you in rounding out our conversation today is talking about what policies are important from a legislative perspective or from a regulatory perspective. I want to focus on the Biden administration. Now last year, they did come out with what was called the America the Beautiful Campaign. This was an effort to conserve 30% of lands and waters by 2030. But they did it from a public and private partnership, so going back to what we were talking about earlier. So how has this administration done when it comes to thinking about conservation as a partnership and not just federal authority?

Hannah Downey:

That is a great question. And I have to actually give the administration some credit where credit is due. When they came forward with their American the Beautiful initiatives, they laid out these principles, and they did recognize the importance of locally-led conservation, diverse stakeholders on the landscape, including Ag and fishermen and hunters and all of those different groups, and saying that they would recognize and support property rights and use voluntary incentive-based approaches.

The great challenge now comes in what does that actually look like in implementation? There have been some things that have given me a little concern, such as expanding some national monuments, some Endangered Species Act rule reforms that enhance regulation rather than look towards a fully incentive-based approach. But that being said, there’s a lot of opportunity here, and there’s room to look for landowners as partners, as I mentioned, and ways to actually bring those folks to the table and work with the groups that are actually doing things on the ground. So I am still optimistic that we can find some really good solutions here. Those conversations are happening. It’s still only been a few years, but 2030 is rapidly approaching us. So I know that’s an area that PERC is dedicated to continuing to work in and ensuring that the Biden administration lives up to those principles that they laid out, that do respect property rights and markets and incentive approaches.

Beverly Hallberg:

When it comes to property rights, so much is wrapped up also in regulation. When you look at the regulatory regime, is that something that you’re constantly working to roll back, to roll back some of the regulations that prevent private owners from running their ranches, running their properties as they see fit?

Hannah Downey:

Absolutely. And regulation is a huge hindrance to allowing us to work better with private landowners on conservation. Kind of a standing joke is that if you’re a rancher and a species is being considered for endangered protections, meaning that you couldn’t do things on your ranch that could potentially harm that species or its habitat, the rancher will say, “Well, that species isn’t endangered. I have eight of them living in my barn right now. They’re everywhere.” But then as soon as the species is listed, they’ll say, “Nope, never heard of them. It’s not anywhere here,” because the presence of that species comes with regulation.

And so we have this situation here where landowners are so well positioned to provide the habitat and conservation and recovery that many of these endangered species need, yet the regulatory approach is just to punish them for having them, for saying, “You can’t actually ranch on this piece of property. You can’t actually build your home here.” And so we need to find approaches that recognize balance there and that say if you were actually doing good conservation, you shouldn’t be regulatorily punished. You should be able to look towards incentive-based approaches or these private partnerships. There are so many ways that we now know work better than regulation. So we are very committed to endangered species, and across the board looking for ways to reduce those regulatory barriers so that market approaches to conservation can work better.

Beverly Hallberg:

And Hannah, if people are interested in the work that you’re doing and the work at The Property Environmental Research Center, I know they can go to your website. But what are ways that they can partner with you on your efforts?

Hannah Downey:

We love working with partners. So if there’s an issue in your state, or region, or something you are working on, please don’t hesitate to reach out. My email is just Hannah, H-A-N-N-A-H at P-E-R-C dot org. Or again, our website has all of the contact information as well. And that’s just perc.org. So very much looking forward to expanding the opportunities with our partners.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, Hannah Downey with PERC, thank you so much for joining She Thinks today. We appreciate all your work.

Hannah Downey:

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Beverly Hallberg:

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