Good market-oriented groups (and really, anyone who has paid attention) will tell you that the way to preserve a natural resource is to make sure that some people can profit from it. So for example, one way to ensure that there's a population of elephants around is to make sure that people in Africa can own game reserves on which elephants live--and to which they can let people pay a fee for the right to go hunting.

The food section of the New York Times has an article about, well, call it food diversity and markets. It tells of a man who has

"spent most of the past four years compiling a list of endangered plants and animals that were once fairly commonplace in American kitchens but are now threatened, endangered or essentially extinct in the marketplace. He has set out to save them, which often involves urging people to eat them."

Eating them? Of course. The development of a market gives producers a reason to produce these plants and animals for human consumption.

Instead, public policy today involves burning food (ethanol) and environmental policies that actively discourage stewardship of endangered species. (Think of "shoot, shovel, and shut up.") 

The headline in the Times article is "An Unlikely Way to Save a Species: Serve it for Dinner." Maybe it's time that the copywriters -- and legislators -- take Econ 101.