FROM HARVESTING TO NONHARVESTING UTILITY: AN OPTIMAL CONTROL APPROACH TO SPECIES CONSERVATION

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to retrace the evolution of mathematical models focused on relation and interaction between economic growth, sustainable development, and natural environment conservation. First, generic defensive expenditures are introduced into a common‐property harvesting model in order to favor the species growth. Second, a transition model comprising both harvesting and nonharvesting values of wildlife biological species emerges. The latter gives rise to a group of purely nonharvesting models where anthropic activities and economic growth may have positive or negative impact on the natural evolution of wildlife species. Several scholars have proved that optimal strategies that are relatively good for harvesting purposes are not simply “transferrable” to the context of conservation of wildlife biological species with no harvesting value. In addition, the existence of optimal policies for long‐term conservation of all biological species (with or without harvesting value) cannot be guaranteed without having relatively large species populations at the initial time. Therefore, all such strategies are incapable of enhancing the scarce populations of endangered species and, therefore, cannot save these species from eventual (local) extinction. As an alternative, policymakers may soon be compelled to design and implement short‐term defensive actions aimed at recovery and enhancement of endangered wildlife species.