A decision model for the efficient management of a conservation fund over time
Authors:   UFZ–Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany, Drechsler M. , Wätzold F. ,   UFZ–Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany
Published: May 2024

A decision model for the efficient management of a conservation fund over time.— An important task of conservation biology is to assist policy makers in the design of ecologically effective conservation strategies and instruments. Various decision rules and guidelines originate, e.g., from the Theory of Island Biography (MacArthur & Wilson, 1967) and metapopulation theory (Hanski, 1999). Designing effective strategies and instruments, however, is only part of the solution to problems of biodiversity conservation. In the real world, financial resources are scarce, and it is not only important that policies are ecologically effective but also that they are economically efficient, i.e. lead to maximum ecological benefit for a given resource input. Efficiency has been analysed, e.g. in the context of the spatial allocation of conservation funds (Wu & Bogess, 1999) and of the spatial design of compensation payments for biodiversity enhancing land–use measures (Wätzold & Drechsler, 2002). Decision analysis is a helpful tool for integrating knowledge from different disciplines and identifying optimal strategies and policies (e.g., Drechsler & Burgman, 2003). Methods of decision analysis, such as optimisation procedures, are often a core component of ecological–economic models that bring together ecological and economic knowledge via formal models (e.g., Ando et al., 1998, Drechsler & Wätzold, 2001, Johst et al., 2002). Such models do not only allow a static integration of economic and ecological aspects but also to describe the dynamics of ecological and economic systems in an integrated manner (Perrings, 2002). Examples of such dynamic modelling approaches are Richards et al. (1999), Costello & Polasky (2003) and Shogren et al. (2003). In the present paper we investigate a dynamic conservation management problem different from those of the above mentioned authors and tackle the problem of long–term conservation when future financial budgets are uncertain. The background for this problem is that many species can only survive if certain types of biodiversity–enhancing land–use measures are carried out on a regular basis, such as regularly mowing meadows to create habitat for butterflies (Settele & Henle, 2002). This means that funds have to be regularly available over time, because a temporal gap in the availability of funds may irrevocably drive a species to extinction. While over the last two decades or so a growing commitment of society and governments to conserve biodiversity could be observed, that in many cases also included the increasing provision of funds for this purpose, there are signs that this commitment is currently weakening. An example of such signs are opinion polls in some countries (e.g. Germany) showing that environmental and resource protection issues are given a lower priority by the general public than ten years ago. This implies that there is an increasing risk that conservation funds will be lower in the future than today either through a decrease in political support for such funds or through a decline in donations for private organisations that finance conservation funds....