An analysis of persistence, resilience and the conservation of keystone species

Ecologists and economists are increasingly in agreement that ecological and economic systems are linked and that these systems should be viewed as one system. However, because this recognition has been recent, there are very few formal studies of jointly determined ecologicaleconomic systems (ecosystems). Consequently, this paper has two objectives. First, the ecological concepts of persistence and resilience are characterized in the context of a stylized ecosystem. Next, these concepts are used to study a conservation problem with two noteworthy features. In this problem, the objects of interest are keystone species, and society is assumed to derive benefits from the ecological and the economic aspects of conservation.