Media Coverage

…In a study that ONDA commissioned to examine the potential economic benefits of designating the Badlands area outside of Bend as a federal wilderness area, the Montana-based non-profit research firm Headwaters Economics found that counties with protected federal lands, including wilderness, outperformed their counterparts in a number of key economic indicators, including per capita income, job and population growth.

:There is a lot of complaining about public lands, but from an economics perspective having public lands is a good thing and demonstrably so,” said Ben Alexander who helped write the Badlands report for ONDA.

It’s a phenomenon that has played out not just across the Western United States, but also around the world where entrepreneurs and educated members of the workforce are seeking out so-called quality of life destinations, identifying the places they want to live and locating there. Wilderness and other protected areas like national parks, it turns out, factor significantly into those decisions. In some cases, the transplants bring their businesses or their jobs with them, in other cases the jobs are following the skilled workforce, explained Alexander.… (more…)

…In a 2007 study, Headwaters Economics ranked Clackamas County among the Western-U.S. counties with the most developed acreage in the wildland-urban interface.

That acreage is likely to grow. The U.S. Forest Service predicts that 13 percent of the rural acres within 10 miles of the Mount Hood National Forest will see substantial increases in housing development by 2030…

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…A study released last fall by Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based nonprofit, found that Montana and Wyoming, despite widely differing effective tax rates, haven’t seen much difference in drilling activity.

"It doesn’t seem to be affecting where companies drill," said Mark Haggerty, one of the study’s authors…

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Guest Column: by Ray Rasker, Headwaters Economics— …The price of fighting forest fires has been increasing substantially, now accounting for close to half of the Forest Service’s budget and costing the taxpayer billions. Yet we have failed to address the root causes of these escalating expenses…

Across the West today, only 14 percent of private land adjacent to forests has homes on it. But this relatively small percentage is tremendously expensive.  When combining local, state and federal efforts, the cost to protect homes from forest fires exceeds $1 billion per year.  If 50 percent of the forested private lands were developed, fire fighting costs could exceed $4 billion, almost the size of the Forest Service’s entire budget.

A recent case study analysis of Montana by Headwaters Economics illustrates the gravity of the problem.  On average, protecting homes from forest fires in Montana costs $28 million annually.  If no restrictions are placed on future home construction, the costs likely will rise to $40 million by 2025.

Climate change has increased costs even further.  From past evidence, we know that a one-degree increase in average summer-time temperature is associated with a doubling of home protection costs.  So in Montana, with additional development and hotter summers, the cost of protecting homes from forest fires could exceed $80 million by 2025.… (more…)

…A study put forward by the advocacy group Damascus Citizens for Sustainability questions the economic benefits to communities that comes with gas drilling in terms of economic development.

The study, or series of reports, was performed by Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based nonprofit research group, and examined counties in the Western United States with an economic focus on oil and gas extraction and other forms of mining. It compared those counties to others of similar size (populations of 57,000 or less) that had broader-based economies.

In a summary about the prospects of using oil, gas or coal as a strategy for growth, the study reported that counties that used that strategy “under-performed” other similar counties in several important areas that impact the economy, including the incomes of workers in non-energy jobs, economic diversity and the education level of the population.

The study, which was made public in the fall of 2008, can be found at Headwaters Economics: Energy.

The study gives specific examples of how gas extraction is currently affecting two counties on Colorado’s West Slope. It says, “On the positive side, energy development on the West Slope has created new economic opportunities, reduced unemployment, spurred rapid in-migration, and raised wages for many workers. On the negative, fast growth has exacerbated inflation, housing, and commuting pressures; contributed to a growing wage and wealth gap; and made it more difficult for other industries to thrive.”… (more…)

…With its expanses of relatively pristine nature and a modern infrastructure, the US West is unique, says Ray Rasker, executive director of Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit in Bozeman, Mont. The region has long been a magnet for immigrants. But late-20th-century arrivals were not, as they once had been, mostly people seeking to work the land. Resource extraction, once a mainstay, is an ever-shrinking portion of western economies.

Between 1970 and 2000, nonlabor jobs fueled 86 percent of this growth. Mining, timber, and agriculture (including ranching) contributed only 1 percent. Now, 93 percent of jobs in the West have no direct link to public lands, says Rasker. But wilderness areas, in conjunction with infrastructure like airports, correlated closely with areas that saw the greatest growth.

“The major contribution is that it creates a setting,” he says, and that’s what immigrants want. Conserving rather than exploiting nature makes more economic sense, he says. People move here to live near nature.… (more…)