Abstract
Traditionally, recommendations for wildlife population management have neglected the economic costs of management, and have thus risked wasting management resources. Recent advances in decision theory for application to conservation allow for the explicit inclusion of costs and finding optimal strategies to reach specific management objectives. The white-backed woodpecker, a highly specialised forest species, is critically endangered in Sweden. As part of a broad attempt to improve the status of the species and also improve conditions for other organisms dependent on similar resources, the Swedish EPA has produced an Action Plan for the woodpecker, with total implementation costs estimated at SEK 200 million. We will apply and further develop novel decision-theoretical methods to identify the most cost-effective management strategies that meet the woodpecker Action Plan’s objectives. We will also examine the vulnerability of these recommendations to uncertainty around model assumptions. This project will determine the best and most economically efficient strategies to save the species taking into account woodpecker population ecology, habitat requirements, environmental variability and uncertainty. Furthermore our approach and its application will generate/produce an exemplary case-study for application to regional endangered species management, with potentially great strategic impact on biodiversity conservation in general.
Sweden