Efficient Compensation Payments for the Protection of Species: Application of an Ecological-Economic Model

We present an ecological-economic modelling procedure to design compensation payments for species protection. In order to find an ecologically effective and economically efficient design, we choose an interdisciplinary approach that combines both ecological and economic knowledge. We develop our procedure on the example of White Stork protection in a spatio-temporally structured landscape generated by human land use. The ecological knowledge is synthesised in a simulation model, which includes the energy balance of individual storks, and their foraging behaviour to determine the effectiveness of land use practices measured by the number of surviving nestlings. Cost data of different land-use patterns are obtained from an economic survey. The results of the ecological simulation model and the survey are integrated in a numerical optimisation procedure, which determines the efficient land-use patterns. The procedure is able to solve complex allocation problems such as the spatial and temporal allocation of a budget among two or more areas of any shapes with spatially differing species-specific cost and benefit functions. Its modular structure allows its application to many kinds of species and landscapes with different forms of land use. The procedure produces the efficient spatio-temporal compensation payments both in qualitative and quantitative terms, and is hence relevant to the implementation of species protection policies and the resolution of conflicts between species protection and commercial land use.