A lack of tree replacement is a com

A lack of tree replacement is a common failure in dehesa
ecosystems. In this situation, the policy dilemma is how to
counter the gradual loss of oaks in the dehesa (with
expected negative consequences for biodiversity and
carbon stock conservation), while maintaining the private
profitability of current dehesa uses. Our analysis of the
steady state is set in time, and attempts to show the
differences in private income between actual and ideal
states enjoyed by the benefiting generations, without
considering what was sacrificed or enjoyed before arriving
at a steady state. Indeed, the generations that choose
to invest in holm or cork oak natural regeneration and to
produce a sustainable natural regeneration are unlikely
to witness the oak woodland’s return to steady state it
will take too long. Although, the ‘best’ results in an
ideal scenario (ignoring previous sacrifices) are used for
comparison with the actual unsustainable practices, it is
still more profitable for a private land owner to gradually
let the oak woodlands disappear in favor of pasture
and scrubland, given current market prices for cork and
other oak products. Moreover, if investment in cork
and holm oak woodland regeneration is carried out, it
reduces future commercial income by considerably more
than simply allowing a slow depletion of oak trees,
as shown by Campos et al. (2003) for cork oak dehesas
and Martı´n et al. (2001) for holm oak dehesas in the
Monfragu¨e area.
Regeneration costs explain a private landowner’s rationality
in not encouraging natural regeneration of oaks.
However, the market may be behaving short-sightedly here
since the slow disappearance through aging of a significant
number of holm oak and cork trees could drive up the
future price of well-wooded dehesas at the expense of
treeless pastureland or scrubland. It is very likely that the
present economic values of cork, wood, GR and environmental
services actually undervalue their future profitability.
Uncertainty about the future provision of dehesa
environmental services may require that public compensa
tion be given to dehesa owners for investing in natural
regeneration treatments in aging oak woodlands.
At present, we cannot attribute an individual amenity
value to different agroforestry land uses. It could be
assumed that the estimated private amenity value relies on
an estate exceeding a certain minimum woodland area,
above which size the dehesa produces certain un-priced
services or amenities. For this reason, it seems reasonable
to expect that a future decrease in dehesa oak woodland
area would also reduce amenity self-consumption on the
basis of the losses in the dehesa landscape and biodiversity
values.
There is a positive relationship between maintaining
agroforestry commercial uses and land appreciation,
which suggests that landowners are aware of any deterioration
of the agroforestry natural and cultural values in
the dehesa, but dehesa oak conservation seems to be
detached from amenity self-consumption in the short-term
horizon. Previous studies show that sustainable oak
regeneration in the dehesa leads to commercial losses,
and this may be the key short-term reason for a lack of
private investment in the further conservation of dehesa
oaks (Campos et al., 2003; Martı´n et al., 2001). The latter
might be combined with a misperception of the future
scarcity of oak woodland because oak depletion is a
gradual process.
The relationship between amenity self-consumption and
public subsidies for natural regeneration may be the crucial
issue. On the one hand, apart from providing environmental
services to landowners, maintaining the dehesa’s natural
values indirectly provides diverse public benefits (i.e. scenic
values, biodiversity, carbon storage, and flood and
erosion control). In this sense, although landowners benefit
from amenities self-consumption and are protective of
their private ownership rights, they may acknowledge that
the government has a duty to protect natural resources
(Huntsinger et al., 2004). On the other hand, the presence of
high levels of amenities self-consumption may reduce the
cost to government of encouraging oak woodland conservation.
Campos and Mariscal (2003) show that the minimum
compensation levels for undertaking agroforestry practices
of environmental interest in the Monfragu¨e area are lower
for dehesa owners with a higher willingness to accept
commercial losses for consumption of private amenities.
Even if pursuing natural oak regeneration is not
economically profitable, given current preferences and the
shortcomings of the government’s land use policy, we
argue that the dehesa oak woodlands should be maintained
above a threshold size and perhaps developed to maintain
future options for providing rare commodities (e.g. cork
and a large range of livestock races) and working landscape
amenities for future generations. The long-term conservation
of the dehesa cork and holm oaks may depend
con