Controlling wildlife damage by diffusing beaver population : a bioeconomic application of the distributed parameter control model

The beaver population in the Southeastern United States has caused severe damage to valuable timber land through dam-building and flooding of bottom-land forest. Traditionally, beavers have been trapped by small group of people as a source of their livelihood. The low pelt price in the recent years has failed to stimulate adequate trapping pressure, and thus, resulted in increased beaver population and damage losses. The low trapping pressure has left the burden of nuisance control on property owners. Since the beaver population is mobile, extermination of beavers from affected parcels results in migration of beavers from neighboring less controlled parcels to less populated controlled parcels. This backward migration of beavers from uncontrolled habitat to controlled habitat imposes a negative diffusion externality on the owners of controlled parcels because they have to incur the future cost of trapping immigrating beavers. Unless all the land owners agree to control the beaver population simultaneously, the diffusion externality could result in a low incentive for control of beaver population on the part of individual land owners, causing a wedge between social and private needs for controlling beaver population. This study attempts to develop a bioeconomic model that incorporates dispersive population dynamics of beavers into the design of a cost-minimizing trapping strategy. While recognizing the need for several management options, depending on the land owners attitude about beavers, this study focuses its attention on the situation where all the land owners in a given habitat share common interest of controlling beaver nuisance, and collectively agree to place the area-wide control decision in the hands of a public agency, on a cost sharing basis. The model is based on the notion that the public manager attempts to minimize the present value combined costs of beaver damage and trapping over a finite period of time subject to spatiotemporal dynamics of beaver population. The time and spatial dynamics of beaver population is summarized by the parabolic diffusive Volterra-Lotka partial differential equation. Thus, the current problem is a typical distributed parameter control problem. The cost-minimizing area-wide trapping model is capable of characterizing the beaver control strategy that leaves enough beavers after taking into account the net migration at each location and time, so as to strike the optimal balance between timber damage and trapping cost. The marginality condition governing this tradeoff requires that the marginal damage savings from the beavers trapped at each location equal the marginal costs of trapping. The marginal savings from trapping activity, in turn, is measured as the imputed nuisance value (shadow price) of the beaver stock in a unit area. The optimality system for this problem that characterizes the optimal control is solved numerically. The validity of the theoretical model is empirically examined using the bioeconomic data collected for the Wildlife Management Regions of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The empirical simulation generated discrete values for the optimal beaver densities and trapping rates across all the individual operational units over time. The entire distribution of optimal beaver densities does gradually and smoothly decline over the period of time. The unevenness of the initial population distribution smoothes out eventually across the beaver habitat. At each geographical location, towards the end of the planning period optimal trapping rate will become zero, whereas the population density asymptotically approaches zero. The sensitivity analysis where the cost and damage parameters of the model are alternated between high and low values indicates that an increase in the damage potential of beavers could substantially increase the net present value total cost. On the other hand, an increase in the cost of beaver trapping adds only marginally to the total cost, conserving more number of beavers. The geographical variation in the beaver damage potential has a noticeable reflection on the spatial distribution of trapping rates, with little impact on the optimal densities. The areas with higher beaver damage potentials require more intensive trapping operation

Assessing the Recreational Charter Fishing Market in Florida: A Hedonic Price Analysis

In this study we analyze the effect of a wide range of factors on the variation of recreational fishing trip prices in Florida. We collected extensive data from recreational fishing websites maintained by guides and outfitters and used different empirical methods for quantifying the relationship between trip price and various trip characteristics. The Hedonic Price model was used to estimate the implicit prices of freshwater and saltwater fishing trip characteristics. The results suggest that freshwater and saltwater anglers significantly value the lodging feature included in the fishing trip package. Moreover, saltwater anglers had a higher willingness to pay to catch specific fish species (e.g., peacock, tarpons, and dolphins). The analysis of implicit prices of fish species can provide a mechanism to fishing and wildlife management agencies to monitor and detect any significant changes in fishing activities. The findings from this study can be useful to policymakers in ensuring that policies and priorities align with anglers\u27 preferences and with the long-term sustainability of these unique natural resources

Ecological-economic assessment of the effects of freshwater flow in the Florida Everglades on recreational fisheries

This research develops an integrated methodology to determine the economic value to anglers of recreational fishery ecosystem services in Everglades National Park that could result from different water management scenarios. The study first used bio-hydrological models to link managed freshwater inflows to indicators of fishery productivity and ecosystem health, then link those models to anglers\u27 willingness-to-pay for various attributes of the recreational fishing experience and monthly fishing effort. This approach allowed us to estimate the foregone economic benefits of failing to meet monthly freshwater delivery targets. The study found that the managed freshwater delivery to the Park had declined substantially over the years and had fallen short of management targets. This shortage in the flow resulted in the decline of biological productivity of recreational fisheries in downstream coastal areas. This decline had in turn contributed to reductions in the overall economic value of recreational ecosystem services enjoyed by anglers. The study estimated the annual value of lost recreational services at $68.81million. The losses were greater in the months of dry season when the water shortage was higher and the number of anglers fishing also was higher than the levels in wet season. The study also developed conservative estimates of implicit price of water for recreation, which ranged from$11.88 per AF in November to $112.11 per AF in April. The annual average price was$41.54 per AF. Linking anglers\u27 recreational preference directly to a decision variable such as water delivery is a powerful and effective way to make management decision

Trade related intellectual property rights for genetic resources: Implications for developing countries

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