Values of Natural Habitat
See Environmental Economics
The natural environment is a source for a wide range of resources that can be exploited for economic profit, for example timber is harvested from forests and clean water is obtained from natural streams. However, land development from anthropogenic economic growth often causes a decline in the ecological integrity of nearby natural habitat. For instance, this was an issue in the northern rocky mountains of the USA.
However, there is also economic value in conserving natural habitat. Financial profit can be made from tourist revenue, particularly in the tropics where species diversity is high. The cost of repairing damaged ecosystems is considered to be much higher than the cost of conserving natural ecosystems.
Measuring the worth of conserving different habitat areas is often criticized as being too utilitarian from a philosophical point of view.
Read more about this topic: Habitat Conservation
Famous quotes containing the words values, natural and/or habitat:
“Nothing is so threatening to conventional values as a man who does not want to work or does not want to work at a challenging job, and most people are disturbed if a man in a well- paying job indicates ambivalence or dislike toward it.”
—Alice S. Rossi (b. 1922)
“Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.”
—William James (1842–1910)