The Endangered Species Act and Private Property

The Ruckelshaus Institute Board began considering issues related to the implementation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) on private property at the May, 1996 board meeting.  From this meeting, a consensus-based set of principles was developed to help guide discussions on reauthorizing the ESA. 

These principles became the basis for a chapter that the Institute Board contributed to a 1998 book entitled Private Property and the Endangered Species Act, edited by Jason F. Shogren (UW Stroock Distinguished Professor of Natural Resource Conservation and Management).  William D. Ruckelshaus, founding chairman of the institute board, wrote the foreword. Contributing authors to this book included UW Faculty members Stanley H. Anderson and Jeffrey A. Lockwood, and Ruckelshaus Institute board member John Turner.

Dr. Shogren continued to pursue ideas for assisting landowners with endangered species on their lands and edited another book, Species At Risk: Using Economic Incentives to Shelter Endangered Species on Private Lands, published in 2005.  Several UW Faculty members contributed chapters including Frieda Knobloch, Gregg Cawley, Deb Donahue, Steve Buskirk, Tom Crocker, Jason Shogren, and John Tschirhart.  The foreword was written by members of the Ruckelshaus Institute Board under the current chairman, Ambassador Michael J. Sullivan.

Both books were published by the University of Texas Press.