Optimal management in protected areas: A dynamic model

Natural resources, as well as historical and cultural monuments located in protected areas, form part of our national heritage. Tourism and recreation allow visitors into protected areas to enjoy the nature, to reinstate, recover and broaden their personal outlooks, to experience the local history, culture, flora and fauna, and to interact with the environment harmoniously. One of the objectives of the administration of protected areas is to maximise profits from tourism and recreation, where profit is defined as the difference between the revenue from visitors and total investment in recreation, service and defensive expenditure for ensuring the preservation of the park's natural and cultural heritage. The park manager invests in order to increase the number of visitors; however, such an increment damages the environmental resource, with the consequent decrease in visitors and consequent increment in the effort necessary to defend the resource. This defensive action leads to an increment in the resource stock, which resumes the increment in the number of visitors. This paper aims to model the relevant aspects of these prey-predator relations. It turns out that, for reasonable parameter values, the optimal trajectory exhibits a cyclical strategy. © Common Ground, Paolo Russu, All Rights Reserved.