Methods for allocation of habitat management, maintenance, restoration and offsetting, when conservation actions have uncertain consequences

We develop methods for conservation resource allocation, to help with decisions about targeting of protection, habitat management, maintenance and restoration or biodiversity offsetting. We construct a framework, where conservation actions have different responses for different biodiversity features in different environments, and in which uncertainty in responses and the time perspective are explicitly considered. Costs of actions in different environments are also accounted for. Costs can be defined as constants, functions of time or as functions of the total area in which an action is performed. We optimize the combination of actions to maximize conservation value given uncertain responses, limited resources, different robustness requirements and limits to the area in which different actions can be undertaken. Accounting for the uncertainty in responses to actions or accounting for time can change the optimal combination of actions. We can account for both negative consequences of uncertainty (robustness analysis) and positive aspects of uncertainty (opportunity analysis). To allow for the complexity of the analysis above and to significantly reduce data demands, we have omitted an explicit spatial structure from these analyses. Nevertheless, we describe approaches that account for spatial considerations, for example, by using the present methods in combination with software that is intended for the spatial analysis of static biodiversity pattern. The proposed analyses have been implemented in a software package called RobOff, which will be made freely, publicly available. Thereby it is possible for the first time to effectively find solutions to a significant set of conservation resource allocation problems. These analyses can assist conservation scientists and managers in decision making based on quantitative analysis.