Bryan Leonard, Shawn Regan, Christopher Costello, et. al.Brief by Birch Malotky2024-10-182024-10-182023-08-01https://wyoscholar.uwyo.edu/handle/internal/9775https://doi.org/10.15786/wyoscholar/9983From water rights to mining, logging, grazing, and oil-and-gas leases, private parties are usually granted rights to public natural resources on a use-it-or-lose-it basis; if they don’t divert, mine, log, graze, harvest, or extract, the lease may be forfeited. As such, conservation interests are unable to acquire public natural resource rights directly from the market, even when they are willing to pay more than resource developers. The authors of this study held listening sessions, analyzed economic and legal literature, and looked at relevant statutes and regulations to understand what would be involved—and what potential side effects might be—if "non-use" rights were recognized. They found that letting conservation interests purchase natural resource rights could provide a market-based alternative to top-down regulation when navigating multiple uses on public land. The authors also outlined a series of potential pitfalls and called for further research.research brief, conservation, public natural resourceshttps://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi4573