is flimsy. Conversely, they believe that our poor grasp of the biological, 

 hydrological , and chemical functions performed by estuarine wetlands suggests 

 that most development permits for coastal wetlands development projects should 

 be denied. Shabman and Batie think that this is the prudent course of action 

 for a society composed of enlightened risk averters. 



43. Balco, J.J. 1981. Assessing wetlands values--evaluation dilemmas. Pages 

 421-429 in B. Richardson, ed. Selected proceedings of the midwest 

 conference on wetland values and management. Minnesota Water Planning 

 Board, St. Paul. 



In 1979, the U.S. Water Resources Council sponsored a series of workshops 

 on "Emerging Issues in Wetlands/Floodplain Management." The Council decided that 

 before embarking on a program of developing new specific methodologies a thorough 

 analysis of existing methodologies would be useful. This insight led to the 

 formation of an interagency task force to oversee the analysis. The task force 

 decided that five functional values should be considered in a wetland evaluation 

 methodology, including habitat provision, hydrologic benefits, recreation 

 benefits, agricultural uses, and the national or global cultural heritage 

 transmitted through wetlands. Roughly, the findings of the task force were that 

 no general methodology for assessing all wetlands functions was available; many 

 useful methodologies were available for assessing habitat provision; and few, 

 if any, adequate methodologies were available for assessing recreational 

 benefits, agricultural benefits, or hydrologic functions performed by wetlands. 

 In view of the sophisticated analytic economic tools available to impute site- 

 specific recreation benefits, this finding (that there is no good methodology 

 available for assessing wetland recreation benefits) suggests that the task force 

 needed much more input from natural resource economists. 



44. Bardecki, M.J. 1981. Wetlands in southern Ontario: a policy science 

 approach. Ph.D. Thesis. York University, Ontario, Canada. 275 pp. 



Bardecki examines the causes of wetland conversion in southern Ontario. 

 Farmland conversions are the principal cause of wetlands loss in this region. 

 The author recommends abandonment of the wetlands conversion subsidization 

 program of the Federal Government. (This thesis was published in 1984 as 

 Geographical Monograph No. 16 by York University.) 



45. Jaworski, E., and C.N. Raphael. 1981. Results of wetlands value study 

 in Michigan. Pages 445-451 jn B. Richardson, ed. Selected proceedings 

 of the midwest conference on wetland values and management. Minnesota 

 Water Planning Board, St. Paul. 



The same technique, data, and values that were reported for the preserva- 

 tion benefits of Michigan coastal wetlands in an earlier study (see [26]) by the 

 authors are reported here. In addition, Jaworski and Raphael develop replacement 

 costs for the same wetlands for various specific wetland functions. The defect 

 with the estimation technique is that it imputes all of the value of the 

 estimated expenditures (if the function is provision of outdoor recreation 

 activity) or the entire value of the harvest (if the function is provision of 

 habitat for a commercially harvested wildlife species) to the wetlands. A 

 conventional value of a participation day for the activity in question as 



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