The Effect of Federal Wilderness on County Growth in the Intermountain Western United States

Abstract

A consistent theme in the debate over federally-owned wilderness areas in the intermountain western United States is that local economies may be adversely affected by such a designation. Yet empirical evidence of this negative effect is rarely offered. This paper finds, for a sample of 250 nonurban counties in the eight states of the intermountain west, no evidence that the existence of federal wilderness is directly or indirectly associated with either population-density or total-employment-density growth between 1980 and 1990. This empirical finding is based on a disequilibrium model of population and employment growth. Furthermore, much of the economic concern over wilderness designation centers on its perceived effect on resource-based industries. Yet, this study finds no empirical evidence that county-level resource-based employment is adversely affected by the existence of federal wilderness.

Impacts of national forests in the West on county population and employment

“…The first variable is lagged employment. Again, exogenous variables are lagged to account for simultaneity and direction of causation (Carlino and Mills, 1987;Duffy-Deno, 1998;Lewis et al, 2002). Based on these previous studies this is expected to have a positive relationship with today's employment growth.…”

“…Many have speculated that wilderness designation of federal lands can lead to a decrease in local employment opportunities in extractive resource industries (Duffy-Deno, 1998). This interaction between wilderness and employment assumes that extracting resources from wilderness lands was economically viable.…”

“…Managing forests for all four forms of forest values has spurred much debate over the trade-offs between conservation and extractive uses (Duffy-Deno, 1998;Lewis et al, 2002). In practice, the U.S. Forest Service found itself in the middle of disputes between demands for ecosystem services and commercial logging activity.…”

“…The U.S. Forest Service frequently lost credibility as it attempted to satisfy conflicting demands set forth by the timber industry, environmental groups, the tourism industry, and local and national politicians. Numerous studies questioned if and how the enforcement of national legislation impacted population, employment, and economic growth in areas around national forests (Chen and Weber, 2011;Duffy-Deno, 1998;Eichman et al, 2010;and Rasker et al, 2013), with differing results. A study by Eichman et al (2010), which looked at the 73 counties affected by the Northwest Forest Plan, found that between 1994 and 2003, the presence of reserved land slowed employment growth by 0.23%.…”

Forest Management Policy, Amenity Migration, and Community Well-Being in the American West: Reflections from the Northwest Forest Plan

“…Several researchers have investigated whether federal land management policies emphasizing environmental protection versus resource extraction (logging, mining, and grazing) have different effects on economic growth. There is evidence that the presence of public lands managed for noncommodity values (as opposed to resource extraction) does not have negative effects on income and employment growth at the county or regional scales (Rasker and Hackman 1996;Duffy-Deno 1998;Goodstein 1999;Lewis et al 2002Lewis et al , 2003Rasker 2006). Evidence is mixed, however, regarding whether managing public lands for environmental protection rather than resource extraction is positively correlated with income and employment at the county scale.…”