2008/07/31 by Florian Hartig, Martin Drechsler
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Environmental Science · #Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies #Economic and Environmental Valuation #Environmental Conservation and Management #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2008.07.028
published as Biological Conservation, 2008, 141, 2625-2631 · 8 pages, 5 figures. Minor changes to v1. This version corredponds to the final publication in Biological Conservation
openalex publication_date 2008/09/18 · arxiv created 2008/09/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Survival probability within a certain time horizon T is a common measure of population viability. The choice of T implicitly involves a time preference, similar to economic discounting: Conservation success is evaluated at the time horizon T, while all effects that occur later than T are not considered. Despite the obvious relevance of the time horizon, ecological studies seldom analyze its impact on the evaluation of conservation options. In this paper, we show that, while the choice of T does not change the ranking of conservation options for single species under stationary conditions, it may substantially change conservation decisions for multiple species. We conclude that it is of crucial importance to investigate the sensitivity of model results to the choice of the time horizon or other measures of time preference when prioritizing biodiversity conservation efforts.