Wildlife populations have declined 68 percent over the past five decades, and climate change is only expected to exacerbate that trend. Yet, while studies have shown a clear link between the decline in wildlife species and human health (e.g. here and here), the principal law protecting wildlife—the Endangered Species Act—is often under fire and is expected to be weakened under a Trump administration. A chief complaint is that the Act’s habitat protections decrease property values. A new study finds that across the United States, on average, that is not the case.
Harris Assistant Professor Eyal Frank and his co-authors examined the economic consequences of the Act after compiling the most comprehensive dataset for more than 900 U.S. species going back to the beginning of the Act in 1973. This included both species habitat designations and the more stringent critical habitat designations. They then matched these data to the largest available dataset on housing and land transactions, as well as building permits. This allowed the researchers to more fully characterize the overall impacts of the Act as well as how different species and regions experienced different outcomes.
The researchers found that home sales just inside the boundaries of protected areas were slightly lower than home sales just outside protected areas—especially the sale of new homes. In addition to the shift in land market transactions happening more outside of the protected areas, the researchers also found that homes inside protected areas hardly depreciated in value, while homes just outside protected areas appreciated in value.
The sale price of homes just outside protected areas increased by as much as 10 percent. This could be due to two factors. First, construction of new homes within protected areas was perceived by builders to be to more difficult, and so they constructed new homes just outside the boundaries of protected areas—pushing prices up in possibly more saturated markets. Second, homeowners value “backing up to open space.”