The time horizon and its role in multiple species conservation planning

TL;DR

This paper examines how the selection of a time horizon influences conservation planning decisions, especially for multiple species, highlighting its importance in ecological decision-making and prioritization.

Contribution

It reveals that the time horizon significantly affects conservation priorities in multi-species contexts, emphasizing the need to consider time preference in ecological models.

Findings

Time horizon impacts conservation decisions for multiple species.

Single species rankings remain stable under different time horizons.

Highlights importance of sensitivity analysis in conservation planning.

Abstract

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.