Decision making in livestock conservation

In this article, theory and practical implementations of decision making in livestock conservation are reviewed. It is argued that the objective of livestock conservation is a composite of maintaining between and within breed diversity and single breeds of recognised value. Assuming that this goal can be reflected in an objective function, decision making requires maximisation of this objective function with or without restrictions. Different strategies have been proposed in the literature to achieve this goal. While the diversity measure suggested by Weitzman (1992) [Weitzman, M.L., 1992. On diversity. Quart. J. Economics, CVII: 363-405.] is not fully appropriate to be applied to breed conservation within livestock species, the approach of maximising expected diversity Weitzman (1993) [Weitzman, M.L., 1993. What to preserve? An application of diversity theory to crane conservation. Quart. J. Economics, CVII: 157-183.] is seen as a fundamental concept in this area. Although highly elaborate methods of decision making are discussed in the scientific literature, the concepts presently used by national or international authorities or non-government organisations are rather simplistic, mainly risk-related and based on simple functions of population size. It is argued that decision making has to account for the global diversity of a species and therefore decisions and conservation activities should be coordinated on an international level. The use of more appropriate decision rules will strongly increase the cost efficiency of conservation investments. Livestock conservation should be based on an extended objective function reflecting the expected future value of the conserved set of breeds, which encompasses within and between breed diversity as well as specific traits and cultural or scientific value of the main breeds. A critical issue is the derivation of the required parameters like the breed value or the risk status of a breed. Since it will generally be difficult to obtain exact values, decision making under uncertainty will be the usual challenge and Bayesian decision theory might be an option. The optimum allocation pattern and implementation of conservation activities can be derived based on Weitzman's expected diversity concept. Approximate decision rules for breed prioritisation based on the extinction probability of a breed and its marginal objective function are given. Even if the respective parameters are not perfectly known, the use of the suggested approaches has the potential to double the cost efficiency, in terms of maintained diversity per conservation dollar spent, compared to the simplistic approaches that are used today.