Assessing the Economic Value for Wildlife A Case of the Re-introduction Sika Deer

Formosan Sika Deer (Cervus nippon taiouanus) is the only extinct deer in the Taiwan wilderness. They were once widespread over the island of Taiwan, and had a huge population living in the plains and hills of the low and middle altitude about 300-400 years ago. However, deer have an important economic value and have been traditionally utilized in many ways. So, in the early history of Taiwan, the migrant and indigenous people hunted deer as essential goods, food and by-products. Due to the deer's high market value, the people in Taiwan exploited the deer population within 200 years. In this century, as many as 50,000 Sika Deer skins a year went to Japan, and the deer pelt exports peaked at 100,000 one year in 1920's (Chang 1985). In addition, the native habitat was destroyed by expanding agriculture and development. Those factors of severe exploitation and habitat degradation led to the deer's extinction in the field. McCullough (1973) pointed out Formosan Sika Deer would be extinct by 1969, and the only deer left were in captivity.

The high economic value causes the over-exploitation and the extinction of Sika Deer. This favorable market value for deer also influenced by the Chinese diet culture. There is an ancient belief that a person will gain the particular attributes and special nutritional properties by eating the part of the animals with those specific remarkable attributes, especially in traditional Chinese medicine. For example, the partially-developed antlers of deer are considered magical, because this is a fantastic vivid growing part of the bodies while observing the dominant buck with a doe herd. The other useful products include bone marrow, meat, penis, tendon, fat, blood, teeth, bile and skin. From a historic viewpoint, this wide array of deer parts makes the deer the most economically valuable animal. In addition, deer products are so important to have notable values as a cultural symbol, because deer are considered good fortune, bringing a family health and long life. Even in today's modern society in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the preference of deer products crosses all social classes, irrespective of income capability, education background and social status. This cultural tradition affects the market value for deer, and still continues throughout geographical distribution today.

Since 1987, there has been a re-introduction project of Sika deer conducted by Kenting National Park, Taiwan. Being distinct from the traditional valuation in which wildlife are priced in a visible market, we try to adopt a holistic valuation system for the re-introduced Sika Deer population. In this recovery and restoration project of ecosystem, it is appropriately $3,000,000 USD for the costs of the field extinction of Sika Deer toward establishing a self-sustainable healthy population within the last decade. In a cost-benefit analysis framework, we would like to realize how much social welfare or well-being we can get during this re-introduction project.

Assess the economic value of re-introduced Sika Deer?

First, in the use-value aspect, in Taiwan we cannot balance the management budget with the method of hunting fee or license money, because it is illegal to own a firearm to hunt or to trap the deer after the hunting ban. Since 1995, the released deer population outside the enclosure has been increasing and in the future the deer population maybe gradually over-abundant. But due to the legislative ban on any kind of hunting in Taiwan recently, we cannot include consumptive hunting activities in the economic value of wildlife. The only value we can use now is toward the indirect use-value. In this broad definition, our personal enjoyment "consumes" the deer by watching the deer tracks, taking pictures and videos, and reading about it on news and TV. Second, in the non-use value aspect, Gray (1993) summarized four components: existence value(knowing their existence), option value(continued availability in the future use), bequest value(willingness to pay), and quasi-option value (expectation of growing knowledge).

To practically measure the possible values for the re-introduced deer, there are two straight forward ways to attach a monetary value: willingness to pay and compensation demanded. In our over-simplistic model, we may assume that the deer-watchers are "gainers", and the farmers whose farmland is impacted by the deer are 'losers". So our question is becoming : is the welfare or benefit of gainers sufficient to cover the costs to losers? We can estimate the non-market good, and analyze the value of the deer-related recreation by using the travel cost method (TCM; Clawson 1959), contingent valuation method (CVM; Dwyer 1980),and other methods. Third, in addition to thinking of wild deer's value in monetary term, we can still use a demand intensity score (DIS; Gray and Larson 1982) to estimate demand which is based on direct human activities. Due to the frequency and extent of involving in deer-related outdoor recreation, each individual gets a score which denotes their favorable degree toward a specific re-introduction project. In sum, either economic or intrinsic deer's value is totally based on the attitude and perception of human society.

The above approaches to assess wildlife value show that it is very difficult to put every value together and to compare with an over-simplified scale. After understanding the limits of estimating wildlife values, either of traditional monetary methods or of social demand survey, we will try alternative effort to assess the deep insight of public opinion, and hope to effectively help our conservation officials and wildlife managers to address issues, to reduce human-deer conflicts, and to promote the whole ecosystem management practices.