Professor Gardner was reached in Wyoming on a small dairy farm. He attended the University of Wyoming where he came under the influence of John A. Hopkin and received B.S. and M.S. degrees in agricultural economics. His Ph.D. is from the University of Chicago, where T.W. Schultz and D. Gale Johnson were the dominant influences on his intellectual development and approach to investigating economic problems. His dissertation was directed by Johnson and examined the efficiency of Federal range policy, focusing on the grazing permit system and investment in range improvements. After his work at Chicago he returned to the West where he has taught at a number of universities and researched a wide variety of natural resource issues. Over his career he has been involved in a number of administrative assignments and research projects abroad, but he has always remained close to his campus base and primary discipline.

Gardner's work is characterized by adroit use of the neoclassical paradigm to show the misallocation of resources resulting from barriers to market entry, impediments to asset transfer, and regulatory rules utilized by government agencies. Livestock grazing, range improvement, oil shale development, water allocation and development, and domestic and foreign agricultural policies are among the topics studied. In more recent years he has also employed the "public choice" paradigm to enrich his analysis of institutions and policy, and he just completed a book on the political economy of the agricultural sector.

Professor Gardner was one of the first economists to conceptualize federal grazing permits as entitlement assets which earn economic rents. By analyzing the capitalization of these rents in comparison with actual market permit values, Gardner was able to infer misallocation of federal grazing quantities because of the eligibility requirements utilized by the government to ration permits. Gardner's proposed reforms of the permit system that would have produced efficient market allocations have been widely referenced and partially adopted as the eligibility requirements have been weakened. Gardner chaired the task force, consisting of prominent range and social scientists and organized and sponsored the National Academy of Sciences, that produced a definitive study of range condition and public range use and management. His chapter on the productivity and the use of Western rangelands in the Resources for the Future book published in 1991 may be the most comprehensive analysis available on these topics.

Probably Gardner's most significant professional contribution is his work on water. He was among the first to estimate the elasticity of demand for household water using cross-sectional data from Northern Utah, and his estimate has proved to be durable in light of more recent and time series estimate. He was also among the first to systematically study water markets as an allocating mechanism and showed the increase in water values that ensues when impediments to water transfers are removed. As early as 1965, Gardner was strongly advocating water markets as the solution to allocating problems resulting from premature and inefficient water development and use. Such markets would force holders of water rights to face the true opportunity cost of water use and thus promote efficiency and conservation. Today, there is virtual consensus among resource economists that water markets hold great promise for reaching efficiency and equity goals. Many institutional changes are being made in many states and the Federal government to accommodate water markets along the lines recommended by Professor Gardner.

He thinks penetratingly about virtually all policy and social issues. This accounts for both his breadth of understanding and depth of skill applied to agricultural economic problems. He is an unusually versatile and talented teacher. He is articulate and can communicate economic reasoning to a wide range of audiences. He has unbridled enthusiasm for the value of economics in solving social problems and this enthusiasm is contagious. He has also carried these qualities to review teams, committee work, and administrative service in the profession and universities where has served. He is an outstanding and selfless citizen of the scholarly community.