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The Wildlife Habitat Benefits Estimation Toolkit

The Wildlife Habitat Benefits Estimation Toolkit, developed in collaboration between economists at Defenders of Wildlife and Colorado State University under a grant from National Council for Science and the Environment’s Wildlife Habitat Policy Research Program, is a set of easy-to-use spreadsheet-based valuation models, tables and databases directed at land use and wildlife planners and others interested in estimating the economic benefits associated with wildlife and habitat conservation in specific geographic regions.

The toolkit comprises models that generate estimates of

Open space property value premiums: the share of residential property prices in an area of interest that is attributable to the presence of a nearby open space, or the increase/decrease in property prices that would result from an increase/decrease in open space in the area;
Net economic benefits per activity day for participation in wildlife-associated recreation activities (fishing, hunting, wildlife-watching);
Visitation numbers for wildlife-associated recreation for an existing wildlife refuge or state game management area, or changes in visitation from the expansion/reduction of the acreage on such lands, as well as state-wide visitation numbers for other conservation acreage that provides for wildlife-associated recreation activities;
Annual values for ecosystem services provided by terrestrial and aquatic habitat or wetlands.

Finally, the toolkit contains a literature review of the impacts of land conservation on economic competitiveness of a community.

The toolkit also provides a set of reports that contain literature reviews and present the methods applied in the development of the estimation model and valuation tables; detailed user manuals that include a series of application examples; and several presentations that provide an overview of the toolkit.

WHPRP Toolkit

1. Download the Toolkit

In Firefox: Right click, choose "Save Link As" option and then browse to the location on your computer where you want to save this file.
In Internet Explorer: Right click, choose "Save Target As" option and then browse to the location on your computer where you want to save this file.

2. Unzip it using a program like Winzip, be sure to check your settings to ensure that it maintains the folder and file structure. This should create a folder called WHPRP Benefits Toolkit with a series of files and subfolders within it.

3. You must copy this folder and all it files and subfolders to the top level of your C: drive for the formulas to work. You cannot place it in a folder of your choosing, Excel does not allow that because the links between the files are not able to be adjusted.

4. You should see: C:/WHPRP Benefits Toolkit when you look at your C: drive. Open the folder and read the instructions to begin using this toolkit.

Related Documents:

Introduction to the Wildlife Habitat Benefits Estimation Toolkit
Report prepared for the National Council for Science and the Environment as part of the project "Development of an Operational Benefits Estimation Tool for the U.S."

Benefit Transfer Toolkit Journal Article
Loomis, J., T. Kroeger, L. Richardson and F. Casey. 2008. A benefit transfer toolkit for fish, wildlife, wetlands and open space. Western Economics Forum 7(2):33-43.