Large oil spills routinely impact hundreds or even thousands of birds. In order to determine the compensation that responsible parties owe the public, trustee agencies typically examine the number of live and dead birds collected to estimate total bird mortality caused by the spill (Ford et al., 1987). In these natural resource damage assessments (NRDA), compensation is typically based upon the potential ecological benefits that flow from a restoration project. In the case of a bird kill, final compensation is based upon the cost of implementing a restoration project and not upon a dollar value per bird. The dominant paradigm for calculating compensatory restoration for bird injuries is Resource Equivalency Analysis (REA). This paper begins by providing a brief overview of REA when applied to birds. We then examine the REA implications of varying the level of mortality, baseline variability, and demographic variables in a simple population model that tracks both injured and baseline population levels. After finding no evidence that these factors necessarily produce short recovery times, we summarize two general approaches for calculating lost bird-years. We conclude that short recovery times (e.g., one-year) are unlikely for birds when using individual-based measures of injury. Further, we believe that recovery times may be much longer than currently calculated for situations where plausible "recovery mechanisms" cannot be defined.
Over the lastfew decades, California 's rural communities have experienced a sociodemographic transformation as the percentage of Latinos in these towns increased dramatically. These high concentrations of Latinos are correlated with poverty and low educational achievement. Using multiple regression analysis, this study examines how socioeconomic status, school funding, English proficiency, and Latino concentration affect test scores. This study's major findings are: (a) that the socioeconomic status of parents in rural communities is the primary predictor of academic performance; and (b) that the academic performance of both rural Latinos and Whites improves as Latino concentration increases. This last result is in contrast to previous studies, which have relied on pairwise correlations andfocused on primarily urban populations.
Natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) is the process of quantifying monetary damages for injuries to wildlife, habitat, and the services they provide, in the event of an oil spill or other pollution event. One economic method, Resource Equivalency Analysis (REA), has become the predominant tool used for calculating these damages. It may be employed to calculate damages to both habitat and/or individual animal species. It has been used nationwide in a wide range of cases involving a wide array of habitat types and animal species. This paper provides a conceptual overview of REA, a review of the use of this method in California, and a discussion of some of the practical and theoretical issues facing the application of REA.
In discussions about the value of cleaning and rehabilitating oiled wildlife, much attention is focused on the costs to provide such care. Several references have made widely varying claims regarding these costs, yet none have provided a detailed accounting of costs associated with rehabilitation. Therefore, this paper focuses on three oil spill responses conducted in northern California (M/V Kure, M/V Stuyvesant, and S.S. Jacob Luckenbach) since 1997. We examine the costs associated with wildlife care using detailed accounting provided by the Oiled Wildlife Care Network. We include all variable costs (including labor and travel expenses for staff at the facility, facility expenses such as utilities and other indirect costs, and supplies) and compare these amounts to the numbers of birds collected live and dead, as well as the number treated and released. We discuss other fixed and variable costs that are not included, as well as characteristics of the spill responses that impacted rehabilitation costs. Finally, we discuss the results with regard to natural resource damage assessments, the costs of restoring birds in the wild, and non-economic criteria relevant to an evaluation of the value of oiled bird rehabilitation. We conclude that costs and benefits vary based on factors that include the temporal nature of the spill, the level of preparation, and the behavior of the responsible party.
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