Econometric models for estimating costs of salmon habitat restoration in the Northwest USA

Details

• Journal Title:
  Biological Conservation
• Personal Author:
  Holland, Daniel S. ; Fonner, Robert
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) ; NWFSC (Northwest Fisheries Science Center)
• Description:
  Substantial public and private resources are dedicated to restoring aquatic and riparian habitats. These efforts support conservation of fish and wildlife and provide other ecosystem services such as erosion and flood control. Resources are generally not sufficient to undertake all beneficial projects, but information and tools to prioritize habitat restoration based on cost effectiveness are often unavailable due to a lack of cost information. To address this gap, we present statistically estimated models of some of the most common activities used to restore salmon habitat using data from projects completed over the last two decades in Oregon and Washington. We use a hedonic modeling approach that enables us to evaluate how different restoration activities and site characteristics affect the total cost of projects. These models can contribute to strategic planning by providing a means to easily estimate costs of alternative habitat restoration scenarios that may contain hundreds of individual restoration activities spread over large areas. While our study is focused on salmon habitat restoration, the models, and our methodology, have broader applicability to river and riparian habitat restoration since these habitat actions can provide other benefits such as flood and erosion control. Our models demonstrate that most habitat restoration activities exhibit economies of scale that should be considered when designing restoration projects. In addition, our analysis indicates that the costs of most of the modeled restoration activities have been increasing much faster than general inflation, an important consideration when budgeting for restoration activities that will be completed over many years.
• Keywords:
  Economics Economies Of Scale Hedonic Pricing Salmon Economies Of Scale Hedonic Pricing Cost-effectiveness Cost Trends Hedonic Model Return On Investment Salmon Habitat Salmon Recovery

  More +
• Source:
  Biological Conservation 320 (2026) 111912
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2026.111912
• Format:
  PDF
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Rights Information:
  Accepted Manuscript
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:d7d0fdf3eafc8fff4c3346f1feab5201ab67b51ba180095621ba8ab58c858e620c752cbfb38654fb5e163f4034d651b4f9ff4ca7c27ea1f875c0b6c556435480
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/73680/noaa_73680_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.31 MB ]