Oak Woodland Policy — Abstract of Paper


Working Woodlands: Public Demand, Owner Management, and Government Intervention in Conserving Mediterranean Ranches and Dehesas
Pablo Campos-Palacín,¹ Lynn Huntsinger,² Richard Standiford,² David Martin-Barroso,³ Pedro Mariscal-Lorente,³ and Paul F. Starrs⁴


The contributions of Californian and Spanish oak woodlands to owners, neighbors, and society are undervalued. Recent Spanish studies have begun to identify the components of value provided by traditional oak woodland agro-sylvo-pastoral systems, including environmental and self-consumption values. Work in California has revealed that self-consumption by owners, benefits to neighboring properties, and benefits to the larger society are important components of the total valuation of traditional low-intensity oak woodland ranching. In Spain, this type of bioeconomic analysis, known as "Total Economic Value," engages an institutional framework at pan-European, national, and regional levels as the full economic values of low-intensity agriculture are increasingly recognized and supported by subsidies and public policy initiatives. In Californian oak woodlands this accounting helps provide a means for assessing conservation investments by third party non-governmental organizations, and sheds light on oak woodland landowner behaviors crucial to efforts to conserve these mostly private lands. We embark on a course of research to conduct comparative bioeconomic analysis in Spain and California, including evaluation of the ecological outcomes of various scenarios, and the institutional leverage points for such information. This paper introduces ecological, economic, and institutional similarities and differences in the woodlands, with particular attention to the possibilities of comparative bioeconomic analyses.