Conflicts and Choices in Biodiversity Preservation

The purpose of this article is to examine the preservation of biodiversity as an economic problem. Using a very simple prototype model, we discuss how to include diversity in the objective function and how to develop a simple cost-benefit ranking criterion for ordering priorities. Then we analyze data on endagered species preservation decisions in the US to shed light on the conformity of theory with practice. A basic theme is that the core issue in biodiversity preservation today is the fuzziness of the objective function.