WildEarth Guardians

Monday, September 25, 2006
The Value of Clean Waters and Wild Forests: Economic and Community Benefits to Protecting New Mexico's Inventoried Roadless Area

WildEarth Guardians commissioned a team of economists to publish this report which finds that New Mexico's inventoried roadless areas on U.S.F.S. lands generate tens of millions of dollars each year in economic value as well as direct jobs and income
Contact: Center for Sustainable Economy

New Mexico’s 1.6 million acres of inventoried roadless areas on national forests are a unique natural capital asset yielding significant economic benefits in the form of clean water, carbon sequestration, recreation, hunting and fishing opportunities, scenery, flood control, and habitat for threatened, endangered, and sensitive species. Nevertheless, their roadless status remains highly uncertain as federal regulations protecting these lands remain in political limbo.

An important aspect of the policy debate involves economic values and consequences. While the economic costs of forgone timber production, mining, and oil and gas leasing are relatively well researched and understood there has yet to be any formal consideration of either market or nonmarket benefits conserved by maintaining roadless areas in an undeveloped state. This paper seeks to inform the debate over future management of inventoried roadless areas in New Mexico by estimating the current magnitude of such benefits.

To accomplish this, we disaggregate, update and recalibrate in part previous workcompleted at the national scale by Loomis and Richardson (2000) who considered recreation, passive use, scenic, waste treatment, and carbon sequestration values. We do so by incorporating site specific information on roadless area size, composition, and attributes, New Mexico-specific recreation data, and regionally-specific carbon sequestration data as a basis for more refined NewMexico values. In addition, we apply Sedell et al. (2000) to estimate the value of clean water flowing from roadless area watersheds and apply non-market values estimated by Loomis and Ekstrand (1997) for Mexican spotted owl critical habitat. We also estimate the community benefits associated with non-motorized recreation and quantify differences in the relative economic performance of counties with and without significant concentrations of roadless lands.

Our results provide evidence that New Mexico’s inventoried roadless areas generate tens of millions of dollars each year in both economic and community benefits. Annual economic benefits range up to $42 million for maintenance of water quality, $24 million for carbon sequestration, $26 million for outdoor recreation, $14 million for passive uses, and $1.4 million in enhanced property values. Annual community effects range up to 938 jobs and $23 million in personal income. The magnitude of these values underscores the need for careful consideration of the full set of both market and non-market economic benefits of protecting inventoried roadless areas in the context of federal and state administrative processes affecting long term management of these unique natural areas.

View the executive summary (PDF)

View the full report (PDF)