Improving the cost-effectiveness of ecosystem management: an application to waterfowl production

Species conservation is an important global policy issue. The design of cost-effective species conservation programs requires resource managers to choose from a suite of conservation activities and sites. This article determines cost-effective conservation strategies for waterfowl using a bioeconomic modeling framework, which is developed using a biological simulation model for waterfowl and regression analysis. The model accounts for (a) a broad range of land-use and direct wildlife conservation activities, (b) the effect of landscape heterogeneity, and (c) interactions between conservation activities. Results indicate that accounting for the three factors listed above can improve the cost-effectiveness of waterfowl conservation on agricultural land.