A unit of Lasting Forests
Sustained forests; sustained profits
evolving since March 30, 1999

of an Alternative Wildlife Resource Management

Review and Key Concepts

A resource is an economic concept. It is a physical entity that may produce human benefits. It has the characteristics of energy (or matter; transferable), time, space and variety.

Each resource is dynamic, changing in relation to these 4 components. All resources, forests, water, minerals have the same 4 elements.

If "economics" is the study of and activities related to the allocation of scarce resources (all of them) then wildlife management is a subset of economies. Finance is a subset of economics. It is related only to money.

Wildlife that cannot be reached has no benefits (or certainly very few) to humans. (The "existence value" argument). This relates to the space component of a resource. Having eaten a half gallon of vanilla ice cream, there is little interest in another half-gallon of the same ... but maybe another flavor (variety).

A resource by definition is related to benefits. In modern wildlife work, few people realize that benefits are non-linearly related to population size.

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Last revision July 20, 2000.