Market environmentalists

Here's a balanced and thorough description of an interesting idea I've come across before:

Wildlife conservation via private ownership and sale.

It arises from the idea of the Tragedy of the commons; when everyone shares a resource, no one has any incentive to harvest it in a sustainable manner. It doesn't pay to go easy on your local fishery if all your neighbors are dredging up all the animals you spare. It's been suggested that many historically destructive extractive industries (such as commercial fishing and logging) would behave much better if they were given exclusive rights to harvest from certain areas.

This article does an excellent job of parsing out this issue - especially contrasting conservation efforts that redirected market forces and efforts that opposed them. It sounds like another messy subject that will have to be thoughtfully addressed on a case by case basis! I hope any environmentalists who oppose this approach on philosophical grounds can at least take away the lesson that shutting down supply works much better when you also address demand.