From the AP (07/27/2005):
Three piping plovers have been seen flying, and that means the National Park Service can open parts of an area known as the Hatteras Spit to people and cars.
The park service said Tuesday that it would reopen the ocean and inlet beach to off-road vehicles and pedestrians beginning at 6 a.m. Wednesday. The soundside beach and interior of the spit will remain closed while rangers evaluate the plovers' behavior in those spots.
The piping plovers, which are protected by the Endangered Species Act, hatched June 25. The birds typically fledge for 25 to 35 days. The piping plover — a small, sand-colored shorebird that nests on coastal beaches from South Carolina to Newfoundland — has been federally protected as a threatened species since 1986.
"Reopening these areas to public use has been a high priority for the park," said Patrick Reed, acting superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
Just for kicks, let's think about the economic benefits and costs of the closure.
Suppose there are about 500 people (I'm open to better estimates here!) who go to "the point" each day in July to fish (there are families as well but they seem to be drug along, I'll put their value at $0). The closure lasted about 2 weeks. The value of access to a fishing site in North Carolina, as a whole (i.e., Corolla to Calabash, so I'm going high here, way high), is about $21 (from a NMFS report adjusted to 2005 dollars). The total cost is about $150,000 ($147,000 + $3000 of "statistical discrepancy").
Now let's say that the only people that care about the chicks are the 12,000 members of Audubon NC, the 7500 members of the NC Coastal Federation and 500 other do-gooders. Assuming 20,000 people care about the chicks (I'm going way low here), the breakeven benefit of the closure is $7.50. If the do-gooders are willing to make a one-time donation of $7.50 or more then the closure was worth it.
Loomis and White, in the journal Ecological Economics (link, and, hey; check out those references ... scroll all the way down ... [anything wrong with a little self-promo?]), conducted a review of the threatened and endangered species valuation literature. They find that
Annual willingness to pay (WTP) range from a low of $6 per household for fish such as the striped shiner to a high of $95 per household for the northern spotted owl and its old growth habitat.
Note the "annual WTP" are the non-use values described here and my assumption about is that the $7.50 breakeven WTP is a one-time payment.
I'm beginning to think that the closure was not "a prolific example of how the Endangered Species Act has gone wrong."
Update: According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch the plover chicks did not fly until 8/7 and the beach did not open until 8/9. So, double my cost of closure to get it up to $300,000 and the breakeven willingness to pay is $15.
