An artificially scarce good is excludable but nonrival in consumption.

It was the first weekend of 2014 and the Green Bay Packers were hosting the San Francisco 49ers in the wild-card round of the National Football League playoffs. This was a very big game and football fans in Green Bay Wisconsin, known for their passionate devotion to their team, were shocked when a few days prior to the game, reports surfaced that the game was not sold out (a rare occurrence for such a popular team). Imagine a game that is being nationally televised by one of the major networks but Packer fans would flip to the local channel that is an affiliate of that network and instead of the game, would see some other show with a message scrolling across the bottom of the screen that the game has been blacked out in their area.

What the message wouldn’t say, but that Packer’s fans understood quite well, was that this blackout was at the insistence of the team’s owners, who didn’t want people who might have paid for tickets staying home and watching the game on TV instead. Often games that fail to sell out their stadium tickets are blacked out in local broadcast markets.

So the good in question—watching the game on TV—was made artificially scarce. Because the game was being broadcast anyway, no scarce resources would have been used to make it available in its immediate locality as well. But it wasn’t available—which meant a loss in welfare to those who would have watched the game on TV but were not willing to pay the price, in time and money, to go to the stadium.

Sometimes, though, accommodations are made in specific situations. In this case, enough Packers’ fans rallied in sub-zero temperatures that the NFL changed its policy, allowing football fans in the area to watch the game in real time in the warmth of their homes.

Solutions appear at back of book.

John Hume’s Mauricedale ranch occupies 16,000 square miles in the hot, scrubby grasslands of South Africa. There Hume raises endangered species, such as rhinos, and nonendangered species, such as Cape buffalo, antelopes, hippos, giraffes, zebras, and ostriches. From revenues of around $2.5 million per year, the ranch earns a small profit, with 20% of the revenues coming from trophy hunting and 80% from selling live animals.

Although he entered this business to earn a profit, Hume sees himself as a conservator of these animals and this land. And he is convinced that to protect rhinos, some amount of legalized hunting of them is necessary. The story of one of Hume’s male rhinos, named “65,” illustrates his point. Hume and his staff knew that 65 was a problem: too old to breed, he was belligerent enough to kill younger male rhinos. He was part of what wildlife conservationists call the “surplus male problem,” a male whose presence inhibits the growth of the herd.

Eventually, Hume obtained permission for the hunting of 65 from CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) that regulates the trade and legalized hunting of endangered species. A wealthy hunter paid Hume $150,000, and the troublesome 65 was quickly dispatched.

Conservationist ranchers like Hume, who advocate regulated hunting of wildlife, point to the experience of Kenya to buttress their case. In 1977, Kenya banned the trophy hunting or ranching of wildlife. Since then, Kenya has lost 60% to 70% of its large wildlife through poaching or conversion of habitat to agriculture. Its herd of black rhinos, once numbered at 20,000, now stands at about 540, surviving only in protected areas. In contrast, since regulated hunting of the less endangered white buffalo began in South Africa in 1968, its numbers have risen from 1,800 to 19,400.

Many conservationists now agree that the key to recovery for a number of endangered species is legalized hunting on well-regulated game ranches that are actively engaged in breeding and maintaining the animals. As Dr. Rosie Cooney, head of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the world’s oldest and largest conservation group, recently said, “I’m afraid it would be nice to be able to recommend alternative approaches for conservation that don’t involve killing animals....[but] we view trophy hunting as playing an important and generally effective role in conservation.”

However, legalized hunting is a very controversial policy, strongly opposed by some wildlife advocates. Because establishing a ranch like Mauricedale requires a huge capital investment, many are concerned that smaller, fly-by-night ranches will engage in “canned hunts” with drugged or sick animals obtained elsewhere. And there is a fear that the high prices paid for trophy hunts will make ranchers too eager to cull their herds.

QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT