Here is a true, empirical, universal generalization: Well off people enjoy seeing big numbers of large wild animals in natural settings. This applies to the Serengeti Plains, Yellowstone Park, farms, and ranches that attract these animals in large numbers.  

While topography and geology are big draws, especially in Yellowstone, animals are key attractors. Once you've seen ten mud pots splatter or a dozen geysers erupt, unless you are a thermal geologist that's probably enough. In contrast, herds of large animals sustain people's interest over time. (The numbers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service show that in 2016, 86 million Americans participated in wildlife watching, a 20 percent increase from just five years ago.)

When seeing lots of animals, people in poor places think meat. Those here see romance of the wild...at no cost.  Alas, not all good things go together. Herds of wild animals generate both costs and benefits. The great majority of viewers see only benefits; they have no incentives to consider costs.

Economists conceptualize these spillovers as “externalities”. Costly spillovers from an activity such as noxious pollution and drunk driving are negative externalities. Beneficial consequences of providing good wildlife habitat and food generate positive externalities.

Environmental economics use these concepts and logic to help us understand how providing habitat works on the ground. These analytical tools are useful in thinking about the management of romance lands: our parks, wildlife, wildlands, ranches, range lands, forests, and farms. It provides logic for fostering cooperation regarding herds of elk on private lands. I'll use our family ranch as a case, but first the context.

When America won the Revolutionary War, wildlife was transferred from the King to the new government and indirectly to citizens. In America, valuable wild animals such as elk are owned by the state, not the landowner. This change, the public trust doctrine, nullified the traditional European elitist model of private wildlife ownership. *

This made hunting highly democratic and inexpensive. It built a powerful constituency for protecting wildlife and its habitat. As National Public Radio explained on March 20th, 2018, this model is failing due to demographic and cultural factors.**

State wildlife agencies and the country's wildlife conservation system are heavily dependent on sportsmen for funding. Money generated from license fees and excise taxes on guns, ammunition, and angling equipment provide about 60 percent of the funding for the state wildlife agencies that manage most of the wildlife in the U.S. This user-play, user-pay funding system for wildlife conservation has been lauded and emulated around the world. It has been incredibly successful at restoring the populations of North American game animals, some of which were once hunted nearly to extinction.

Vermont leads the nation in wildlife viewing, but that activity "provides no significant revenue stream to the department that would allow for the management of the resources viewed."

My wife Ramona and I operate our ranch to conjoin responsible liberty, ecological sustainability, and modest prosperity.  While the first two values are secure, increasingly large herds of marauding elk put our prosperity at risk. Fifty years ago, there were few if any elk on our place or near it. There were a far smaller number than now and they generally stayed on the Gallatin and Madison ranges a few miles south.

A decade ago only a few elk appeared on our place. Now there are several herds that wander back and forth on neighbors’ lands and ours. While we still enjoy seeing elk on our ranch, and allow friends and helpers to hunt, elk in large numbers become marauders, but I'll describe their costs in the next FREE Insight.***

These elk are attractive and their large numbers are impressive. We enjoy providing good habitat for three species of trout, elk, deer, upland game birds, waterfowl, coyotes, and fox. Occasionally a black bear will follow the Kleinschmidt Canal down from the Gallatin River to our place.

With minor inconveniences, such as goose poop, we find this a basket of blessings and the spillovers from our productive habitat benefit many others. Responsible liberty, sustainable ecology, and modest prosperity usually complement one another. In general, life is good.

* The full articulation of the concept of state ownership of wildlife was not presented until 1896 in the case of Geer v. Connecticut , 161 U.S. 519 (1896). 

** National https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800

"Decline In Hunters Threatens How U.S. Pays For Conservation" March 20, 2018

***In sum, they eat and destroy the integrity of 1250 pound bales of $150/ton hay.  Then the hay can't be loaded for transport. Elk tear up fences, ruin hay covering, and break up irrigation lines.  Worse over the long run, they transport the seeds of noxious weeds such as Russian spotted knapweed, a horridly destructive invader.  Some seeds lay dormant for 20 years. Each year we lose a few thousand dollars in spray costs and lost production.