Controlling transboundary wildlife damage: Modeling under alternative management scenarios

The migratory nature of nuisance wildlife populations creates a special management problem by imposing a negative diffusion externality on landowners undertaking control efforts. This paper reviews three cost-minimizing wildlife-control models, each internalizing the diffusion externality under different management scenarios, namely, unilateral management, bilateral management, and centralized management. The three management scenarios lead to different optimal behaviors. Property owners exerting unilateral control must leave some wildlife untrapped to generate sufficient population pressure against the flow of continual immigration from neighboring populations. Analysis of the bilateral model indicates that noncooperating neighboring landowners having varying pay-off functions will end up with leaving all wildlife untrapped in their parcels. Under the centralized management scenario, landowners find it most profitable to collectively delegate the control responsibility of an entire watershed to a single manager.