Neoliberal Environments

False Promises and Unnatural Consequences

Nik Heynen, James McCarthy, Scott Prudham, Paul Robbins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415771481
• eBook ISBN: 9781135983307
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume explores the nexus between nature, markets, deregulation and valuation, using theoretically sharp and empirically rich real-world case studies and analyses of actually existing policy from around the world and across a range of resources. In short, it answers the questions: does neoliberalizing nature work and what work does it do? More specifically, this volume provides answers to a series of urgent questions about the effects of neoliberal policies on environmental governance and quality. What are the implications of privatizing public water utilities in terms of equity in service provision, resource conservation and water quality? Do free trade agreements erode the sovereignty of nations and citizens to regulate environmental pollution, and is this power being transferred to corporations? What does the evidence show about the relationship between that marketization and privatization of nature and conservation objectives?

Neoliberal Environments productively engages with all of these questions and more. At the same time, the diverse case studies collectively and decisively challenge the orthodoxies of neoliberal reforms, documenting that the results of such reforms have fallen far short of their ambitions.

Part I
Enclosure and privatization

1 The last enclosure

Resisting privatization of wildlife in the western United States

Paul Robbins and April Luginbuhl

Deer forests and the people cannot coexist . . . one or the other must yield . . . [Proprietors] follow a trade in deer with an eye solely towards profit . . . The huntsman who wants a deer-forest limits his offers by no other calculation than the extent of his purse.

(Robert Somers, “Letters from the Highlands: or the Famine of 1847” (as quoted in Marx 1967: 731)

For little more than 20 years now an un-American movement has been trying to explode one of our nation’s most sacred precepts, that of public ownership of wildlife . . . The new Tories – mostly ranch owners with access to elk herds in these parts – increasingly are reserving their estates for a moneyed elite.

(Ed Dentry, Rocky Mountain News, Sports Section, 1999)

Some of the earliest enclosures of public property were those that turned wildlife into a commodity. As Somers described, via Marx, as early as 1847 deer were captured as an organism of profit, a form of “demurely domesticated cattle.” Likewise, hunting, a prehistoric subsistence practice of the Scottish Highlands, had been turned into an elite sport of accumulation. Displacing smallholders, enclosed deer forests (private hunting estates containing “not a single tree”) sprouted “like mushrooms” and “supplanted sheep,” driving farmers to “coarser” upslope lands.

But like many fugitive resources, including fish, water and air, hunted wildlife resist enclosure, owing to their mobility, their intractability to domestication, and their complex ideological associations with wild nature. It is unsurprising, therefore, that at the dawn of the twenty-first century, efforts to enclose wildlife are incomplete, with the promise of a fully privatized wildlife economy yet elusive. Even so, redoubled efforts to conclude enclosure are ongoing throughout the U.S. West, with implications for the relationships among state authority, capital, and non-human organisms.

This is not a phenomenon unique to the U.S. In Zimbabwe, 94 percent of eland live on private game ranches, along with 64 percent of kudu, 63 percent of giraffe, and 56 percent of cheetah. Similarly in Namibia, since 1967, when private wildlife ownership was instituted, private wildlife populations have grown by 80 percent (Muir-Leresche and Nelson 2000), a fact reported and celebrated by neoliberal think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

This study examines the efforts to privatize public wildlife in the U.S., pointing to both institutional and physical efforts at enclosure. Reviewing these efforts in the context of the changing political economy of the rural U.S. West, and with specific reference to the elk economy in the state of Montana, the study shows the way in which nature and labor resist efforts at enclosure. The combination of a rising incidence of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) and an increasingly well-organized anti-privatization movement points to general contradictions in capitalism’s encounter with nature. A complex confluence of eco-managerial bureaucratic interests, gun populism, and virulent infection has created a barrier that is highly resistant to privatization efforts.

Rights to wildlife, conservation, and the game economy

The history of the western U.S. since the eighteenth century is one of enclosures. Native peoples were dispossessed of their lands through direct and violent means. These stolen resources, briefly in the public trust, were later turned over to private speculators in flagrantly corrupt land deals by the U.S. General Land Office. With the establishment of private rights in water, minerals, and forests, the remaining commons of the West marched through a steady pace of enclosures for 150 years, thanks to federal acts like the Preemption Act (1841), the Homestead Act (1862), and the Desert Land Act (1877) (Platt 1996).

State wildlife control

Despite this march of enclosure, some of the original commons of the U.S. West remain outside of the control of private capital. Most obviously, this includes wild animals. Legally, wild animals in the U.S. belong to the states in which they reside. This was established in the Constitution by default, insofar as all responsibilities not claimed by the federal government become those of the states. This was eventually clarified in legal precedent for wildlife through Justice Roger Taney’s 1842 decision regarding fishing rights in Martin versus Waddell. Under this ruling, states hold the right to wildlife and individuals cannot claim private rights to wildlife simply because they hold land on which wild animals or fish are found. This decision was extended in the landmark case of Geer versus Connecticut, which established wildlife as part of the “public trust” – collective property of the people (Bean and Rowland 1997).

As a result, for the first 100 years of the republic, regulation and enforcement regarding wildlife were handled by the states, including the establishment of the first hunting limits, hunting seasons, and bans on commercial hunting, as well as the first deputized authorities and game wardens for enforcement. This authority hardened in the early twentieth century as states formed agencies and overseeing commissions to control and enforce laws and liaise with legislators forming policy (Leopold 1933).

Except where federal sanctuaries and reserves exists and when federal mangers and the strictures of the Endangered Species Act have come to take precedence, the states have reserved for themselves the right to manage significant wild species, especially those that historically have been hunted, many times to the brink of regional elimination.

State management, hunters, and collective interest

Historically the core of wildlife management is in the form of wellestablished state management regimes, therefore, which depend heavily on hunting and hunters as a management mechanism. Indeed, conservation of wildlife in the U.S. began with hunting-inspired regulation, growing into state efforts to control the decline not only of subsistence hunting animals but also the targets of sport and commercial hunting. State wildlife management policy and practice have co-evolved, therefore, with the demands and habits of hunting communities. As a result, hunting still represents the major population control for many major North American species.

A booming hunting economy has prospered over the last century that, although not without ecological problems, has maintained economically important species. When coordinated with wildlife reserves and the national park system, moreover, this anthropocentric and somewhat instrumental system of conservation has further helped to maintain non-economic species. State wildlife managers were early proponents of ecosystem-based approaches to environmental management, for example, and because they historically have had the trust of hunters, they have been able to implement bans and controls liberally in their pursuit of healthy and diverse ecosystems. Indeed, hunting constituencies tend to promote and defend these state level wildlife priorities, even when it means reduced take, enclosed areas, and year-to-year inconsistency in availability of game. The result has been the recovery of wild game and migratory birds in states where strong state wildlife management and hunting are integrated.

This hunting constituency is, however, bifurcated, with local hunters and hunting groups in tension with commercial hunters, commercial outfitters, and their out-of-state and relatively wealthy clientele. This split runs deep in the history of hunting, as a rift between the killing of wildlife as reproductive household practice and as productive industrial commerce. The earliest hunting and gun clubs were often formed to enforce state hunting season regulations, for example, against commercial hunters. Even Theodore Roosevelt’s elitist Boone and Crockett Club, as early as 1887, worked to control and renounce commercial over-hunting (Zaslowsky and Watkins 1994). Though founded to further the private aims both of subsistence hunters and recreational sports hunters (two very different constituencies to be sure) local hunting advocacy compelled state controls, recognized collective ownership, and challenged commercial interests in the public domain, challenging the role of wildlife as an exclusive unit of production and profit with a vision of animals as collective elements of reproduction.

This division persists. Consider the differences in assets, priorities, and investments made by differing constituencies. In Montana, a typical case, the mean annual income of an in-state hunter falls between $30,000–35,000, while out-of-state hunters earn between $50,000–75,000. In-state hunters purchase gasoline and shells, spending $47 per day on average, while out-ofstate hunters spend $207 per day without a guide and $478 per day with one (King and Brooks 2001). While 39 percent of in-state hunters rate meat procurement as a “very important” reason for hunting, only 17 percent of out-of-state hunters respond similarly (Allen 1988).

This hunting economy has further implications for the position of the state in the wildlife management. Historically, state wildlife agencies have depended heavily not only on the political clout of hunting constituencies to assure budgets, but also upon hunting licenses to fund ecological management. State wildlife agencies have a direct interest, therefore, in supporting the traditional management regime and the collectivist priorities that underpin it.

Economic transition, barriers to accumulation, and the emergence of enclosure

This contest over priorities occurs amid a larger political economic transition in all Western states. Ranching has been a dominant land use of the mountain West for the last century. Large parcels of grazing land and forest have remained under small producer control with the help of subsidies and stable markets for beef. With the emergence of feedlot-centered production systems, the vertical integration of the cattle industry, and meatpacking firms increasing monopsony power, producer margins have declined dramatically, putting traditional ranch properties in peril (Love and Burton 1999). As a result, there is an ongoing shift in land ownership from productive ranches to “amenity” ownership – where land in current production is purchased by wealthy out-of-state buyers who are interested in nondeveloped landscapes and good views. This transition is especially rapid around national parks and other “wildernesses” (Travis, Hobson et al. 2002). Rising land prices resulting from development further accelerate the sale of ranch properties and an out-migration from traditional communities. Thus, a production squeeze on primary production, especially ranching, coupled with a shift of new investment money into both recreation and development have set the terms under which the control of elk, mule deer, and other animals are contested today.

Collective control over these resources, while a boon for local hunters (and more generally for the populist culture of hunting), represents a barrier to accumulation for commercial interests in the West’s changing political economy. For recreational outfitters, who sell hunting packages and represent a growing lobby in Western states, traditional state agency priorities – limited hunting seasons and licenses on the basis of ecosystem planning priorities – restrict avenues for profit taking. Further, non-transferable hunting licenses – which in-state hunters are guaranteed as a traditional right – bar the development of meaningful profits for competitive private game licensing. For ranchers facing tighter margins in a changing land market, the income stream from exclusive access to the wildlife that enters their property is attractive. Physical and institutional enclosures offer intriguing opportunities.

Institutional enclosure: “Ranching for Wildlife”

Enclosure of public wildlife for private good is barred by traditional state management regimes. This 150-year-old system is codified in laws in all 50 states. Successful enclosure, therefore, requires changes in the institutional structure of the distribution and transfer of access rights at the state level.

These “institutional enclosures,” variously called “Wildlife Partnerships” and “Ranching for Wildlife,” essentially follow the same model – rights to hunt are disseminated to landowners in large numbers (free of charge based on potential resident herd population), and the income value from sale and transfer are retained by the landowners and professional outfitting interests brokering the transaction. Use rights are retained by the individual hunter, but at highly differential costs (Leal and Grewell 1999).

Such rebundling of property rights so far has been enacted in eight Western states: California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah and Washington. In each case, owing to the statutory restructuring required to transfer rights from the state to the private sector, legislative action has been necessary. The geography of this transition, therefore, follows more generally the commitment of states to a larger agenda of privatization. The power of traditional hunting constituencies in some states (Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming) has proven a barrier to institutional change.

The character of formal enclosure programs vary in the eight states where they exist. Emerging since the early 1980s, all of them require hunting permits to be dispersed to landowners, and most require or allow extended hunting seasons relative to traditional state managed permits. The demands made on the landowner in return tend to vary. While some systems require some kind of management plan, habitat improvement, or public access, many do not, and simply transfer rights and income benefits directly from the state to private owners, largely based on acreage of holdings and habitat.

Economic theory of institutional enclosure

By placing game licenses in the hands of landowners and commercial guides with the right to transfer the hunt to the highest bidder, landowners are in theory provided with incentives for wildlife management and habitat improvement. Efforts in this direction are further touted as beneficial to the traditional, local hunting community, since they are supposed to ensure better breeding stock and healthier herds.

Spearheaded by so-called “New Resource Economists” at free market think tanks like the Property and Environment Research Center, institutionalized enclosures are touted as rational ways to avoid commons tragedies through the proper internalization of environmental externalities: the unremunerated expense and nuisance for land owners of wildlife management. These, like all problems, are best solved by markets. As its most vociferous promoter, Michael Copeland explains, New Resource Economists simply seek to “create private incentives and institutions wherever possible,” with the hope that private ownership might replace government ownership (Copeland 1990: 23).

The notion that these efforts will result in overall improved ecosystem health is questionable. The incentive to produce high-value trophy animals provides no guarantee of ecosystem management and provision of biodiversity. So too, by reducing the authority of state wildlife management agencies (while still recruiting their efforts for emergency hunts, information provision, and other services at public expense), fee-based management decreases ecological control and flexibility, especially over the diverse geographies of migratory species. Enclosures do, however, shift the flow of value from public goods to private pockets, largely to the benefit of nonlocal elites, who in Texas have shown a willingness to pay up to $4,000 per animal, and to landowners who do not have statutory ownership of public animals (Leal and Grewell 1999).

Physical enclosure: game farming

While institutional efforts at enclosure are relatively recent and inchoate, physical efforts have a long history. The deer forests of nineteenth-century Scotland, as noted previously, represented private land that enclosed wild species. State law in the U.S., however, generally retards the development of such economies, since capture of wild animals represents a theft or unauthorized taking of state property.

Economic downturns in traditional agricultural sectors have, however, increased the incentive to produce and breed nontraditional game animals on land fenced for that purpose. As a result, there has been a marked expansion in game farms in the last several years, introduced to save small producers caught up in the rapid consolidation that has eliminated family farms throughout the country. Game farm operators offer a controlled feehunt and guarantee large trophy animals.

Like hunting, game farms are regulated largely by states, except where more general baseline regulations on animal welfare pertain. These fall under the jurisdiction of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the Department of Agriculture, a bureaucracy with a general interest in preserving and not over-regulating producers. As a result, game farms historically have been regulated using the same rules and enforcement mechanisms that apply to private zoos and animal exhibits, despite obvious differences between these types of businesses and hunting. Though rules vary from state to state, game ranchers cannot use captured animals, which are state property, so instead must either import animals from another state (and therefore from another game farm), or breed on site. Animals contained by fences require appropriate health certification and are subject to periodic inspection, quarantine, and systems of identification.

It is difficult to determine the number and total acreage of game farms in the U.S., both because there is no single federal register, and because the market is dynamic. In Montana in 2003, there were 77 operating game farm facilities, enclosing some 4,000 animals over 11,000 acres. This does not represent a large proportion of total animals or acreage, but it does seem to be an increasing trend; licenses for new and expanded facilities rose tenfold between 1993 and 1996.

Receipts from fee hunting on game farms and from sales of farm-bred wild animals are also unclear. While the USDA has advocated “alternative crops and enterprises for small farm diversification,” game farms are one of several strategies (along with niche market commodities) that have done little to stem the decline of small family farms.

Resistance to enclosure

Like institutional efforts to award rights to wildlife to individuals, physical enclosures of animals represent another push towards the com...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Enclosure and Privatization
• Part I Commentary
• Part II Commodification and Marketization
• Part II Commentary
• Part III Devolution and Neoliberal Governmentalities
• Part III Commentary
• Part IV Resistance
• Part IV Commentary
• Part V Conclusion