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Alternative targets and economic efficiency of selecting protected areas for biodiversity conservation in boreal forest

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Abstract

We examine the relative merits of alternative forest biodiversity targets, which give different weights to species according to their conservation status and abundance. A site selection framework is used for choosing the habitat-protection strategy that maximizes biodiversity subject to an upper bound on funding with six alternative conservation goals. By using Finnish data on old-growth forests, we found that alternative conservation goals yield different benefit-cost tradeoffs. Goals relying on complementarity between protected stands result in great marginal costs at a high conservation level. Therefore, under these conditions it may not be economically efficient to establish a large conservation network to protect all species in a given area. In contrast, a large conservation network is more likely to be justified when the habitat-protection strategy focuses on species abundance. The trade-offs between alternative objectives are explicitly measured by incrementally varying the weights given to the species. We found that the targets for all species representation and species abundance can largely be met simultaneously. Protecting red-listed species reduces overall species coverage and species abundance particularly at low budget levels.

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Notes

  1. Another important shortcoming of previous site selection studies is that they are typically static (see Nalle et al. 2004). Ideally one should use a dynamic approach to analyze the problem of biodiversity conservation, in particular, when forests are considered. Because this approach would entail large data requirements and there is still a lack of knowledge about several aspects of biodiversity maintenance, we adopt a static approach.

  2. In Fennoscandia, the average size of a forest stand (i.e., operative unit) is less than 10 ha. A landscape level forestry plan covers typically 10,000–100,000 ha.

  3. It is possible to use also other diversity measures than just a weighted function of species numbers, such as measures of species genetic or taxonomic difference. For reviews of these approaches see, for example, Pearce and Moran (1994) and Gaston (1996).

  4. In other words, we implicitly assume that species persistence is a linear function of abundance. It is possible to use also a logistic functional form (e.g., Hof and Raphael 1993; Montgomery et al. 1994; Haigth 1995; Montgomery et al. 1999), but that would require nonlinear programming, which does not guarantee that the solution is optimal. Moreover, it is not straightforward to calibrate the logistic functions for multiple species.

  5. This formulation is based on several previous studies. The weights are attached to species as suggested by Polasky et al. (2001) (see also Church et al. 2000; Rodrigues et al. 2000b). Church et al. (1996) proposed an additive objective function for assigning weights to species. Hof and Raphael (1993) used quite a similar approach as us regarding the species abundance in the context of timber scheduling problem (see also Bevers et al. 1995). Moreover, they presented a multiplicative objective function (joint viability) instead of additive form. Also Montgomery et al. (1999) and Polasky et al. (2001) presented a multiplicative nonlinear approach based on species abundance. Rodrigues et al. (2000a) introduced a linear site covering problem using information on species abundance.

  6. An objective based on global presence/absence can be justified on the basis that conserving the species someplace is necessary to preserve the genetic information and evolutionary potential of the species (Polasky et al. 2001). However, in a same manner one can state that an essential prerequisite for persistence is that biological diversity is appropriately represented in the local network in the first place (see Rodrigues et al. 2000a and references therein).

  7. It is possible to add a restriction into this model which excludes that a species is accounted as represented when its abundance is less than a given threshold level (cf., Haigh at al. 2000; see also Polasky et al. 2000). The ecological knowledge regarding species is incomplete, however, so it is difficult to define accurate thresholds for species abundance.

  8. We can expect that similar thresholds will emerge in many applications; its precise size will, of course, depend on the data in question. Hence, our finding has an important general message.

  9. Some earlier studies considering tropical habitats (neglecting the economic aspect) have not yielded similar results. For example, Kersaw et al. 1995 found (by using data on Afrotropical antelopes) that in sub-Saharan Africa conservation emphasizing threatened species covered only about 76% of species that were covered according to species richness-based selection (see also Hacker et al. 1998).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Markku Ollikainen and Rauli Svento for useful comments. The usual disclaimer applies. We thank Metsähallitus for fruitful co-operation, in particular Juha Salmi for executing the MELA calculations. This article is part of the project “Managing Boreal Forest Landscapes for Biodiversity: ecological tool and economic implications” financed by the Academy of Finland. Funding from the Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation, the Eemil Aaltonen Foundation. The Finnish Society for Forest Science. Finnish Cultural Foundation, and the Finnish Forest Industries Federation is gratefully acknowledged. We are grateful to E. Huhta, M. Pääkkönen, M. Similä, A.-L. Sippola, P. Välimäki and E. Ylisuvanto for collecting the species data, and Antti Huusko for helping in programming.

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  1. Department of Economics, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 4600, Oulu, FIN-90014, Finland

    Artti Juutinen

  2. Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Mikko Mönkkönen

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  1. Artti Juutinen
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Correspondence to Artti Juutinen.

 

 

Appendix The opportunity costs of stands, \(\texttt{C}\!\!\!\rule[2.3pt]{.4em}{.3pt}\!\!\rule[3.3pt]{.4em}{.3pt} 10^{-4}\)/ha
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Juutinen, A., Mönkkönen, M. Alternative targets and economic efficiency of selecting protected areas for biodiversity conservation in boreal forest. Environ Resource Econ 37, 713–732 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-006-9064-5

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