Public Wildlife on Private Land: Unifying the Split Estate to Enhance Trust Resources

摘要

In the United States, wildlife is a publicly owned resource, yet themajority of wildlife habitat is privately owned. This division ofownership has perpetuated conflicts over such topics as endangeredspecies, public hunting access, and crop depredation. Tensions arisenot only between private property rights and the public interest, whichare both regrettably dynamic legal concepts, but more fundamentallyover the division of economic rents generated from the combination ofpublic wildlife and private habitat.