This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, December 29th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Conservation with at least a nod toward respecting landowners and other private sector participants poses a challenge.

So what's the best way to align incentives for people who have the power to enhance conservation,

but perhaps not quite reason enough to do so.

Brian Yablonski is chief executive officer of the Property and Environment Research

Center.

We spoke earlier this year.

When we talk about conservation and trying to preserve lands and wildlife for another generation, the impulse

by a lot of groups that are, you know, our environmental groups is to

punish, sue, and litigate over getting just the right rules that they think are going to protect wildlife.

And a lot of that probably gets under the skin of a lot of private landowners who have nothing

against conservation or you know are out on the land they They love this. They enjoy this work. And you know the work that

Perk does is trying to find that voluntary mutually beneficial exchange that can actually benefit everyone involved, including the wildlife, including the landscape.

And so it's, I'm always skeptical. It's like, where is this money going to come from to get all these incentives aligned properly because it can't just be mandates.

So what does that look like?

Well, and it can't just be legislation either.

So one of the things that a lot of environmental groups want to do is they want to create maps and go get things

designated like oh well here's where the wolves move through here's where the elk move through

here's where the bears grizzly through, here's where the bears, grizzly bears moved through.

And specifically, we're talking about my backyard in Montana.

And when I first moved to Montana, I had a ranch friend say to me, you know Brian in Montana, you can bring a gun to a meeting, you just can't bring a map.

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