The importance of economic costs in the development of guidelines for spatial conservation management

The paper analyses the efficient spatial allocation of subsidies for biodiversity-enhancing land use. For this purpose a spatial allocation model for two different regions is developed which allows guidelines to be derived on how to achieve the highest possible ecological benefit within a given budget provided to support biodiversity-enhancing forms of land use. In contrast to other conservation biological models, our model includes more realistic economic assumptions. The difference from economic models dealing with the efficient spatial allocation of environmental goods is that the benefit function of our model is based on ecological theory. Therefore, our results differ from those obtained in monodisciplinary studies. In particular, with increasing marginal costs a more even allocation of resources becomes optimal. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.