Public values for restoring natural ecosystems: Investigation into non-market values of anadromous fish and wildfire management

This dissertation is composed of three papers, each using surveys as an aid to understanding public values. The public values on which I focus are related to restoring natural ecosystems: the Lower Snake River in Washington and Colorado Forests.;The first paper, "Recreational Benefits of Removing the Lower Snake River Dams: A Test of Scope for Contingent Visitation Behavior," examines whether respondent recreation behavior would change if four dams were removed from the Lower Snake River. Two contingent visitation behaviors were tested: whether to visit the Snake River if dams are removed and frequency of visitation for two groups of respondents; the general public and Snake River anglers.;The second and third papers focus on Colorado forest ecosystems. Colorado forests are currently experiencing high intensity wildfires as a result of a century of wildfire suppression. Colorado residents living within the wildland urban interface were surveyed to find out how they feel about various fire management prescriptions that may aid in restoring Colorado forest ecosystem health. The survey focused on two types of questions: contingent valuation willingness-to-pay questions and ladder of life well-being evaluation questions.;The first of the two fire papers is titled "Analysis of Public Perspectives of Wild and Prescribed Fires in Colorado." In this paper, I analyzed willingness-to-pay information for three fire management techniques: prescribed fires, fire suppression, and fire prevention. The second fire paper is titled "Using GIS to Investigate the Relationship between Stakeholder Opinion about Wildfire and Landscape Context." This paper builds upon the first by adding spatial modeling to the context. GIS maps were used to create new fire danger variables, and included wildfire locations, slope, and vegetation. Additional variables created from these maps include wildfire distance from homes and vegetative fire danger of homes in their immediate vicinity (100 feet) and extended vicinity (1 mile).;These three papers showed that respondents are knowledgeable about their environments and are, in general, in support of restoring some natural ecosystems. They not only support these issues, but they are also willing-to-pay for them, thereby indirectly indicating importance of restoring natural ecosystems to the United States public.