Quantitative decision tools for conservation programme planning: practice, theory and potential

Conservation programme planning involves allocating a limited budget amongst different potential conservation projects. The selection of projects for funding is subject to a high degree of uncertainty and a number of competing objectives such as ecological protection, recreation and community relations. The purposes of this paper are to summarize the quantitative methods currently used in deciding which conservation projects to fund and to present a general methodology based on decision analysis that can be used for making conservation programme planning decisions. The methodology directly links the proposed contributions of projects to the objectives of the conservation agency, and it includes an explicit consideration of uncertainty and a conversion of ordinal scores into utilities. The methodology is a rational way of making decisions in conservation situations that are characterized by high degrees of uncertainty and subjective information. An application of decision analysis with staff from the New Zealand Department of Conservation is described. Some of the difficulties with using this methodology in practice are discussed in both the New Zealand and broader contexts. The conclusions are that conservation programme planning is currently based on managerial experience and relatively simple scoring procedures, but that a more rational approach based on decision analysis is possible, and additional research would reduce the amount of effort required to use decision analysis for conservation programme planning.