The follow-up question - "How much is it worth to you?" - isn't so easy to answer. But we have to ask both questions because there are links between panthers and seemingly unrelated issues like taxes. And because the endangered panthers are symbols for a whole raft full of other "desirable" things about Florida that we will be forced to put a price tag on over the course of the next 40 years - wetlands, other wildlife, agricultural land, clean water in our springs, even 'my unspoiled view' today vs. 'your high-rise condo' tomorrow.
Consider the panther. It takes a lot of land to grow them - one cat can range over about 450 square miles. There are only about 40 or 50 left in the state, and 50% of their habitat in south Florida is privately owned farmland or rangeland mixed in with wilderness, according to Duke Hammond, a biological scientist with the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission.
A number of big landowners haven't been in a hurry to develop their property, content to use a few acres to make a living and to let the panthers and other wildlife roam on the rest. But when the owners die, Hammond says, federal estate taxes frequently force their heirs to sell at least a piece of their inheritance. And the new owners usually are more interested in turning a buck than growing panthers.
Hammond and an intern at his department, Selene Jacobs, collected case histories of how panther habitat has eroded in this fashion, and have written an interesting research paper on the relationship between wildlife habitat and estate taxes. One example from their research involves the Hilliard family, which once owned 60,000 acres of mostly wild country in Hendry County. When Marlin Hilliard died in 1981, the government gave his heirs nine months to pay $17.5 million in estate taxes. Ultimately they had to sell 17,000 acres to pay that tab. And since then, some 12,000 of those acres have been converted to citrus groves and sugar cane fields. Joe Marlin Hilliard, Marlin's nephew, told Hammond his family would have preferred to keep it undeveloped. And even after some hugely complicated estate planning, the next generation of Hilliards likely will have to sell more land. The panthers' habitat will erode further.
So how much is it worth to help the Hilliards keep panthers as part of Florida's landscape? Should we, for example, tinker with federal estate taxes to slow the loss of habitat? The landowners would like it. And no less a conservationist than Bernard Yokel, president emeritus of the Florida Audubon Society, thinks it's fair to compensate landowners who protect wildlife. Yokel told Hammond, "Wildlife is clearly an asset. But the farmer, and businessman, will not put himself out of business to protect that. It's a luxury, and good environment is expensive. There is planning and money involved if you want an environmental future."
But estate tax reform is problematic: Even conservationists, who tend to favor ways of saving habitat, might not support it. As Hammond points out, landowners often dodge part of their estate taxes by donating the development rights to their property to conservation organizations. Provide a tax break to the landowners, you may end up goring the conservationists' ox because landowners would probably stop giving.
And what about you and me? If my taxes go up to pay for that landowner's tax break, my estimation of the "existence value" of those panthers could change in a hurry. Panthers, in fact, may have already become too expensive to maintain as part of the natural landscape.
But forget the panthers for a moment. Consider a hypothetical Florida a few decades from now in which competition from foreign growers and development pressures from population growth have substantially reduced the amount of agricultural land. How much will the existence value of the remaining farmland and groves be worth to us? Will a movement emerge to preserve some of Florida's "traditional agricultural character" by subsidizing the remaining farmers? Will we want the state to buy development rights to their property, or to reform estate tax law so their heirs can continue to grow fruit and vegetables?
Pick your issue. Some of the state's purest springs now show signs of contamination, probably from agricultural chemicals and runoff. How much are we willing to pay - in regulation, bureaucracy, research, purchases of easements, etc. - to keep them pure? And do we want them 99% pure, as they were, or can we live with 90% pure, or maybe 80%, to balance all the interests involved?
Whether it's panthers or springs or zoning densities, the issue is always messy and we usually avoid meaningful discussion until a lot of our choices have been made for us. Hammond says that he wrote the paper in the first place because the panthers' fate happened "not because of a conscious choice, but because we haven't been talking about what we want to do." He wants us to be thinking about these issues all the time, and he's right. In talking about how many panthers to have or whether to have them at all, we're answering the question of who we are and what we see as fundamental to Florida's identity. We can't stand back and pretend the things we love about the state will endure because they're "priceless." Over time, the market has a way of putting a precise value on them, and at that point the price is often very high.