Conservation Tools

Defenders of Wildlife maintains a "living" bibliography of economic valuation studies, papers, and journal articles to serve as a resource for researchers and policy makers, and their staff to remain current with the latest theoretical and applied economic analyses. This 41-page document provides an extensive list of resources.

The United States Society for Ecological Economics provides a venue for intellectual exchange and collaboration on issues related to the theory, policy, and implementation of sustainability and sustainable development. It publishes Ecological Economics, a journal concerned with extending and integrating the study and management of ecology and economics. This integration is necessary because conceptual and professional isolation have led to economic and environmental policies which are mutually destructive rather than reinforcing in the long term.

The Environmental Valuation Reference InventoryTM (EVRITM) is a searchable storehouse of empirical studies on the economic value of environmental benefits and human health effects. It has been developed as a tool to help policy analysts use the benefits transfer approach. Using the EVRI to do a benefits transfer is an alternative to doing new valuation research.

This is a tool for quickly comparing the performance, costs, and some benefits of green infrastructure practices to those of conventional stormwater management practices. The calculator takes users through a step-by-step process of determining the average precipitation at a site, choosing a stormwater runoff volume reduction goal, defining the impervious areas of the site under a conventional development scheme and then choosing best management practices to meets the runoff volume reduction goal in a cost-effective way.

The Tree Benefit Calculator allows users to estimate the annual economic and environmental value of individual street trees using inputs of a tree’s location, species and size. It is intended to be simple and accessible and should be considered a starting point for understanding trees’ value in the community, rather than a scientific accounting of precise values. This tool is based on i-Tree’s street tree assessment tool called STREETS, which can be seen at itreetools.org.

The Review of Environmental Economics and Policy aims to fill the gap between traditional academic journals and the general interest press by providing a widely accessible, yet scholarly source for the latest thinking on environmental economics and related policy. It is designed for broad appeal to economists and others in academia, government, the private sector, and the advocacy world who share a common interest in environmental and natural resource policy.

The Wildlife Habitat Benefits Estimation Toolkit is a set of easy-to-use spreadsheet-based valuation models, tables and databases directed at land use and wildlife planners and others interested in estimating the economic benefits associated with wildlife and habitat conservation in specific geographic regions. It includes a literature review, shows the methods applied in the development of the estimation model and valuation tables, detailed user manuals, and several presentations that provide an overview of the toolkit.

i-Tree is a state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed software suite from the USDA Forest Service that provides urban forestry analysis and benefits assessment tools. It's an easy-to-use, computer-based program that allows communities to conduct and analyze a street tree inventory and evaluate current benefits, costs, and management needs.