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Sea Otter-Shellfishery Conflicts in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties

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Sea Otter-Shellfishery Conflicts in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Public Law 99-625: Sea Otter-Shellfishery Conflicts in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties A Group Project submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master’s in Environmental Science and Management for the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management Authored by Kim Aldrich Joshua Curtis Samuel Drucker Committee in charge: Dean Dennis Aigner Professor Bruce Kendall Professor Carol McAusland June, 2001 A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Public Law 99-625: Sea Otter-Shellfishery Conflicts in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties As authors of this Group Project report, we are proud to archive it in Davidson Library such that the results of our research are available for all to read. Our signatures on the document signify our joint responsibility to fulfill the archiving standards set by Graduate Division, Davidson Library, and the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. Kim Aldrich Joshua Curtis Samuel Drucker The mission of the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management is to produce professionals with unrivaled training in environmental science and management who will devote their unique skills to the diagnosis, assessment, mitigation, prevention, and remedy of the environmental problems of today and the future. A guiding principal of the School is that the analysis of environmental problems requires quantitative training in more than one discipline and an awareness of the physical, biological, social, political, and economic consequences that arise from scientific or technological decisions. The Group Project is required of all students in the Master’s of Environmental Science and Management (MESM) Program. It is a three-quarter activity in which small groups of students conduct focused, interdisciplinary research on the scientific, management, and policy dimensions of a specific environmental issue. This Final Group Project Report is authored by MESM students and has been reviewed and approved by: Professor Bruce Kendall Professor Carol McAusland Dean Dennis Aigner May, 2001 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is with great pleasure and sincere gratitude that we acknowledge our advisors, Professors Bruce Kendall and Carol McAusland, for their effort, guidance, and patience. Without them this project would never have been possible. We would also like to thank: Professor Chris Costello for his expertise in applied economics and his ability to clarify complex issues. Dr. James Estes, Dr. Daniel Doak, and M. Tim Tinker for their advice and permission to use and modify their spatially explicit population model. Dr. Craig Fusaro for his advice and open access to his library. Dr. Leah Gerber for sharing her resources and knowledge on the sea otter. Pete Halmay and Bruce Steele for their candor in discussing the local sea urchin fishery. Mr. Brian Hatfield for his help in obtaining critical data on otter populations. Greg Sanders for technical advice and data acquisitions. Professor David Siegel for his help initiating and developing the scope and content of this project. iii EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Conflicts between fisheries and marine mammals are increasing in frequency. These include increasing discord between federal and state protection of the southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis) and shellfisheries in California. Congress enacted Public Law 99-625 (P.L. 99-625) in 1986 in an effort to provide the threatened sea otters with a safeguard from catastrophic oil spills and limit conflict with fisheries. Currently the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is not relocating otters and is advocating declaring the translocation plan within P.L. 99-625 a failure. This report examines the economic impact of the southern sea otter with and without enforcement of containment and translocation under P.L. 99-625. The focus area of this report is the coastal waters of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, including the Channel Islands. Impacts are projected from 2001 to 2025. We assumed that the largest quantifiable costs of continued enforcement would be the costs of translocation, whereas the largest quantifiable economic impacts of allowing the otter population to expand would be to fisheries and to tourism. We used a spatially explicit population model to project the growth of the otter population in the absence of zonal management. Using data on otter diet preferences we projected shellfish consumption by otters. An econometric model of the otter’s impacts to shellfisheries was developed to estimate the economic of lost fisheries due to otter consumption of key prey items. We analyzed California tourism data from 1990-97 to estimate the tourism benefit of a local otter population and used this data to project the impacts that otters will have on Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties’ tourism revenues. A cost-benefit analysis (CBA) was conducted to determine the most economically efficient of two management scenarios for the southern sea otter: (1) containment and translocation of sea otters under Public Law 99-625 or (2) natural sea otter range expansion with no translocation (status quo). The goal of this analysis is to provide a tool that can be employed within the policymaking framework of P.L. 99-625. The economic efficient policy option is to discontinue the sea otter translocation and allow natural range expansion. Continued translocation and containment would incur management costs of approximately $1,041,000 while the net benefits from allowing natural otter range expansion would be approximately $114,800,000 (net present value, assuming a 7% discount rate, using median otter population estimates). iv Even if fisheries costs are estimated as the loss of income for fishers, which are 50% of lost revenues, this value (approximately $12 million net present value, assuming a 7% discount rate, using median otter population estimates) is still outweighed by the tourism benefits. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................III EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... IV TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................................................... VI LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................VII LIST OF FIGURES .....................................................................................................................VIII SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 The sea otter--fisheries conflict................................................................................................... 1 Study overview............................................................................................................................ 3 SECTION 2: IMPACTED ENVIRONMENTS.............................................................................. 5 Biological Environment .............................................................................................................. 5 Socioeconomic Environment ...................................................................................................... 6 SECTION 3: PROJECTION OF IMPACTS .................................................................................. 8 Population Biology, Movement, and Expansion Rates............................................................... 8 Fisheries .................................................................................................................................... 12 Tourism..................................................................................................................................... 20 Management.............................................................................................................................. 27 SECTION 4: COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS RESULTS ............................................................. 29 SECTION 5: FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS ............................................................................. 30 Cost-benefit analysis as a tool for decision-making.................................................................. 30 Non-use Value ........................................................................................................................... 30 Modeling ................................................................................................................................... 31 Tourism..................................................................................................................................... 32 Fisheries .................................................................................................................................... 32 SECTION 6: REFERENCES ....................................................................................................... 33 SECTION 7: APPENDICES ........................................................................................................ 39 Appendix A - Sea Otter Biology............................................................................................... 39 Appendix B - Discussion of Modeling Population Dynamics .................................................. 43 Appendix C - Sea Otter Diet and Partitioning of Prey.............................................................
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