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DISCUSSION 
 

Appreciation and Minor Clarification for Kabra (2019) 

 

Adam P. Novick  
  
I thank Asmita Kabra (2019, 17–18) for recognising my Masters‟ Thesis 
(Novick 2013) as contributing to ecological critiques of exclusionary 
conservation. I also thank Kabra (2019, 11) for questioning the widely 
presumed divide between species conservation and human rights. I am 
humbled if my thesis has contributed to that effort.  

I wish to offer a minor clarification to Kabra‟s description of my thesis. 
Kabra in part interprets my thesis as finding that land-use policies can 
restrict active management essential to the survival of a species. To clarify, 
my thesis does not argue that land-use policies prohibit such management, 
but rather that they can discourage it. For example, the US Endangered 
Species Act (ESA) generally imposes uncompensated land-use regulation 
based on the presence of animal species identified (“listed”) as endangered, 
and such regulation (whether as land-use restrictions or liability for 
mitigation) tends to make it self-defeating for anyone to conserve or 
actively maintain habitat for existing populations of declining animal species 
on private land (Langpap, Kerkvliet, and Shogren 2018, 77–78). For 
example, such regulation can impose a financial loss, by tending to decrease 
the market value of selectively regulated land (Novick 2013, 60–61).  

At least in the USA, some conservation laws can indeed prohibit 
management essential to the survival of species. For example, without 
special authorisation for an “alternate forest practice”, Oregon‟s Forest 
Practices Act (Oregon Revised Statutes 527.745) requires landowners to 
replant commercial tree species even if using commercial harvest to prevent 

                                                           
 Courtesy Faculty Research Assistant, Environmental Studies Program, University of 
Oregon, c/o 3715 Donald St., Eugene OR 97405 USA; anovick@uoregon.edu 

Copyright © Novick 2019. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v2i2.79  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v2i2.79


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [110] 

such species from destroying Oregon white oak savanna, a plant association 
that supports several at-risk species and which is imperiled in part by loss of 
historic burning by Native Americans (USFWS 2010). Or, for example, 
without special authorisation, the ESA prohibits periodic burning or other 
active management if it harms individuals of a species listed as endangered, 
even if such management is likewise essential to the species‟ survival.  

Such laws at a minimum create bureaucratic hurdles to saving species 
whose survival depends on active management. However, as reflected by 
the respective amounts of attention in scholarship regarding the ESA, I find 
the disincentives from such hurdles pale in comparison to the disincentives 
from the risk of incurring uncompensated species-based land-use 
regulation.1 I can also confirm this comparison anecdotally, from personal 
experience with both types of disincentives, under Oregon law.  

The distinction between prohibiting and discouraging species conservation 
is, in any case, irrelevant to Kabra‟s central argument, namely, that “the 
„conservation versus human rights‟ binary tends to obliterate important 
debates within the ecological sciences over the theoretical foundations of 
exclusionary conservation” (Kabra 2019, 11; emphasis as in original). The 
distinction is also irrelevant to Kabra‟s conclusion that correspondingly 
broader discourse within ecology might lead to more effective conservation 
policies (ibid.). This is an argument and conclusion I would like to think my 
thesis indeed supports. 

 

REFERENCES 

Kabra, A. 2019. “Ecological Critiques of Exclusionary Conservation.” Ecology, Economy 
and Society–the INSEE Journal 2 (1): 9–26. https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v2i1.51  

Langpap, C., J. Kerkvliet, and J. F. Shogren. 2018. “The Economics of the U.S. 
Endangered Species Act: A Review of Recent Developments.” Review of Environmental 
Economics and Policy 12 (1): 69–91. https://doi.org/10.1093/reep/rex026 

Novick, A. P. 2013. “Risk to maintenance-dependent species from orthodoxy in 
species-based land-use regulation.” Master‟s thesis. University of Oregon. 
http://hdl.handle.net/1794/13343. 

US Endangered Species Act of 1973. Public law no. 93-205, 87 statute 884.  

USFWS (US Fish and Wildlife Service). 2010. “Environmental Assessment for Issuance 
of an ESA Section 10(a)(1)(B) Permit for Incidental Take of Fender‟s Blue Butterfly, 
Taylor‟s Checkerspot Butterfly, Willamette Daisy, Kincaid‟s Lupine, Bradshaw‟s 
Lomatium, Nelson‟s Checkermallow, and Peacock Larkspur in Benton County.” 
Portland, OR. Accessed June 1, 2013 at 
http://www.fws.gov/ecos/ajax/docs/plan_documents/neas/neas_836.pdf.  

                                                           
1 I do not recall seeing any published references to the former as disincentives, but find 
plenty to the latter; e.g., Langpap, Kerkvliet, and Shogren (2018, 77–78). 

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v2i1.51
https://doi.org/10.1093/reep/rex026
http://hdl.handle.net/1794/13343
http://www.fws.gov/ecos/ajax/docs/plan_documents/neas/neas_836.pdf

