An Analysis of Persistence, Resilience, and the Conservation of Keystone Species

Abstract

Ecologists and economists are increasingly in agreement today that ecological and economic systems are connected and that such systems should be studied as a single system. This notwithstanding, since this recognition has been rather recent, there are very few theoretical analyses of jointly determined ecological-economic systems. As such, this paper has two goals. First, the ecological notions of persistence and resilience are described in the context of a stylized ecological-economic system. Second, these notions are used to analyze a conservation problem with two distinct attributes. In this problem, the objects of interest are keystone species. Moreover, society is assumed to derive benefits from the ecological and the economic aspects of conservation.