When humans first shifted from hunting and gathering to agriculture thousands of years ago, the establishment of private property rights yielded enormous benefits to natural resource conservation. People could finally address the problem ecologist Garrett Hardin came to call “the tragedy of the commons.” The owner of a resource takes responsibility for its long-term conservation. If the owner fails to act, the resource ceases to be of any value to anyone. Likewise, if no one owns a given resource, everyone has an incentive to abuse and deplete it. Today, that insight is the cornerstone of “free market environmentalism” — a way of looking at society’s concern for protecting natural resources that is consistent with private property rights and capitalist prosperity. Comprehensive studies of private conservation show the benefits of a property rights-based approach relying on private stewardship.

Today, the world’s ocean fisheries are an extremely valuable commonly held resource that is a source of great environmental concern. That is because it’s not just domestic producers who are putting pressure on a depleted resource as they seek to extract its riches. America’s fishermen are up against the world’s. Can the principles of private conservation be applied here as well?