A comparison of fixed-site and non-fixed-site approaches for species protection

Abstract

The efficacy of simultaneously advancing two distinct conceptual designs (referred to here as fixed-site and non-fixed-site) for species conservation and protection is addressed. In the literature, numerous models can be found that typically stem from a particular design, but rarely are comparisons made between approaches. This paper presents a more integrated optimization framework that models landowner behavior and species viabilities at a landscape scale. Regional demand for resource extraction is used as the economic driver, a variant of simulated annealing is used to solve the model under different species protection approaches, and a detailed species population simulator is utilized to measure biological responses. When directly comparing the outcomes of different species protection strategies from a case study in Oregon (USA), it was found that neither approach was universally superior in terms of financial value or degree of protection for two late seral forest dependent species.