A quarter of all species around the globe are threatened with extinction; this article reviews research in economics on how best to counter those threats. Normative research has developed useful tools for cost-effectively choosing areas of habitat to protect. Such work has also designed working-lands contracts that can induce efficient quantities and patterns of conservation on private lands. Positive research finds evidence that payments for ecosystem service programs are effective, but legal protections for threatened species have a mixed record of success. Economists have also measured both the nonmarket benefits and the costs of species conservation. Emerging work is tackling the particular challenges to species conservation posed by climate change, the demand for exploiting charismatic megafauna, and global population growth. Future research would do well to build on those three areas and to study distributional issues in the benefits and costs of species conservation.

中文翻译：

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物种保护经济学

全球四分之一的物种面临灭绝威胁；本文回顾了有关如何最好地应对这些威胁的经济学研究。规范研究开发了有用的工具，可以经济有效地选择要保护的栖息地区域。此类工作还设计了工作土地合同，以促进对私人土地的有效保护数量和模式。积极的研究发现证据表明，为生态系统服务计划付费是有效的，但对受威胁物种的法律保护有不同的成功记录。经济学家还衡量了物种保护的非市场收益和成本。新兴工作正在应对气候变化对物种保护带来的特殊挑战、开发具有魅力的巨型动物群的需求以及全球人口增长。