-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
index.Rmd
80 lines (60 loc) · 5.2 KB
/
index.Rmd
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
---
title: "Over $1 billion per year is needed to recover ESA-listed species"
author: "Center for Conservation Innovation"
date: "9/13/2019"
output:
rmarkdown::html_document:
css: custom.css
df_print: paged
fig_caption: yes
fig_width: 7
highlight: tango
toc: true
toc_depth: 3
toc_float: true
editor_options:
chunk_output_type: console
---
```{r setup, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)
library(tidyverse)
dat <- readRDS("data/2013-2014_recovery_report_clean_v1.rds")
```
Recovering species listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) requires funding. Here we provide a brief review of the estimated costs of recovering species under the ESA, including one published estimate and one estimate we derive from the most recently available data.
<figure class="figure">
<img src="Island_Fox.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="Island fox">
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Photo courtesy of National Park Service.</figcaption>
</figure>
## Gerber (2016) estimate
The first estimate comes from [Leah Gerber’s 2016 paper](https://www.pnas.org/content/113/13/3563) on conservation triage under the ESA^[Gerber, L. R. Conservation triage or injurious neglect in endangered species recovery. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 113, 3563–3566. (2016).], placing the cost of recovery at $1.21 billion per year. That estimate was based on recovery cost data from 2010 and for about 1,100 species; somewhat dated, but the estimate is consistent with our own calculations below. Further, this and any estimate based on the recovery plan cost estimates is likely a conservative estimate: Gerber noted that the cost to recover 15 species delisted because of recovery as of late 2015 was 74% higher than the recovery plan estimates. If that pattern held across still-listed species and the cost accrues on an annual basis, then we estimate the need at $2.26 billion per year per Gerber’s estimate^[$1.21 billion x 1.74 = `r paste0("$", 1210000000*1.74)`].
## Updated estimate
To update Gerber’s calculation, we derived an independent estimate using the [2013-2014 recovery report to Congress](https://www.fws.gov/endangered/esa-library/pdf/Recovery_Report_FY2013-2014.pdf); see [Calculations, below](#calculations). Using the Service's estimates of species cost of recovery and the time-to-recovery data in the report, we estimate the total cost of carrying out all recovery actions at <span style="background-color:yellow">**$1.62 billion per year**</span>. In brief, the total recovery cost is estimated at $9.4 billion for 481 species with estimates in the report, for an estimated per-species cost of approximately $19.5 million. Multiplying the per-species cost by the count of 1,662 currently listed species, we estimate total recovery cost for ESA-listed species at $32.5 billion. Dividing that by the median time-to-recovery of 20 years—also calculated from the recovery report—we estimate $1.62 billion per year to carry out the recovery actions needed for all current ESA-listed species. The 95% confidence interval, based on 1,000 bootstrap replicates, is $1.22 to $2.06 billion per year.
## Funding sources
A key value judgement that science cannot answer is how much different parties should contribute to the recovery of ESA-listed species. We can, however, consider patterns of past expenditures to help inform current and future allocations. Of the ~$1.4 billion in compliance and recovery expenditures reported in 2016, 80.3% came from other federal agencies, 13.4% from FWS, and 6.3% was reported by the States^[https://defenders-cci.org/analysis/ESA_funding/]. Under the North American model - that is, a model of wildlife management and conservation led by the States - this seems like a very skewed distribution^[However, because we cannot separate compliance and recovery expenditures from the available data, the skew of recovery contributions may be considerably reduced for recovery.].
## Conclusion
In short, both peer-reviewed published research and our own updated calculations from available recovery costs **data put the cost of ESA recovery at over $1 billion per year.** Filling this need will require that the sources of recovery funding be sustainable and balanced among various responsible parties.
## Calculations
```{r per-spp}
summary(dat$est_time_recov_num)
median_est_time <- median(dat$est_time_recov_num, na.rm = TRUE)
# total estimated recovery cost for spp *with* estimates
sum(dat$cost_per_spp, na.rm = TRUE)
# estimated cost per spp
est_per_spp <- sum(dat$cost_per_spp, na.rm = TRUE) / sum(!is.na(dat$cost_per_spp))
overall_est_past <- est_per_spp * length(dat$species)
overall_est_cur <- est_per_spp * 1662
overall_est_cur / median_est_time
# Now let's get some confidence intervals:
with_est <- filter(dat, !is.na(dat$cost_per_spp))
resamp_vals <- lapply(1:1000, FUN = function(x) {
re <- sample_n(with_est, size = 481, replace = TRUE)
tot_cost <- sum(re$cost_per_spp) / 481
return(tot_cost)
}) %>% unlist()
quantile(resamp_vals, c(0.01, 0.025, 0.05, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 0.95, 0.975, 0.99))
quantile(resamp_vals, c(0.025, 0.975))
LCL <- quantile(resamp_vals, 0.025) * 1662
UCL <- quantile(resamp_vals, 0.975) * 1662
LCL / median_est_time
UCL / median_est_time
```