September 10, 2009

Markets in Everything: Endangered Species Edition

By: Sonny Bunch

Ronald Bailey highlights a new Scientific American article exploring the unintended consequences of endangered species lists:

Many conservationists around the world favor enacting and enforcing laws to prohibit capturing or killing rare species. Such laws, it turns out, have unintended consequences. Scientific American reports that laws listing species as endangered can transform them into valuable black market commodities.

Interesting, though not terribly surprising, stuff.