The conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation is understood in portions of academia and sometimes acknowledged in political circles. Nevertheless, there is not a unified response. In political and policy circles, the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is posited to solve the conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. In academia, however, the EKC has been deemed fallacious in macroeconom...

Few attempts have been made to analyze the status of conservation efforts at a continental scale, mainly because of the lack of high‐quality data sets at this scale. Given that land management agencies want to prioritize conservation efforts and spend limited resources wisely, we recognized the need to undertake a national gap analysis. We developed the most detailed national vegetation cover map feasible to analyze the degree...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages the 38‐million‐ha National Wildlife Refuge System, which is devoted primarily to wildlife conservation. I examined the capacity of the refuge system to conserve federally listed threatened and endangered animal species. Population viability data for a random sample of these species were analyzed and extrapolated. Three levels of population viability were distinguished: outbreeding, de...

As an economy grows, natural capital such as timber, soil, and water is reallocated to the human economy. This conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation creates a conundrum for conservation biologists because traditional forms of conservation action require money. We hypothesize that conservation spending in the United States is highly correlated with income and wealth, and we tested whether selected proxi...

Land acquisition is one of the keys to biodiversity conservation, and it is a transdisciplinary endeavor requiring consideration of natural and social phenomena. I integrated principles of conservation biology, ecological economics, and political science to outline an approach to conservation land acquisition in the United States. American political economy, especially, has profound implications for conservation land acquisiti...

Social construction is the virtue ascribed to a subject by the general public; along with political power, it influences the allocation of public policy benefits. Nonhuman species are socially constructed by humans, and political power is held in trust for them by human interest groups. Our goal was to determine if the allocation of benefits to endangered species is consistent with social construction and political power. We a...