Model-based Conservation Decision Aiding in the Presence of Goal Conflicts and Uncertainty

Goal conflicts and uncertainty are two major problems in decision-making for conservation and species protection. Conflicts can often be found between ecological goals on the one hand and socio-economic goals on the other, but also among different ecological goals. They can be formally analysed by methods of multi-criteria analysis. As the solution of a multi-criteria decision problem usually depends on the weights put on the individual criteria (objectives), sensitivity and robustness analyses are necessary to understand the decision problem, concentrate on the essential aspects, and support actual decision processes fully. Uncertainty in the decision problem is often caused by scarcity of information needed to predict the consequences of management actions. The so-called outranking concept proved very useful in the consideration of such uncertainty. Based on a simple fictitious case study the paper demonstrates how multi-criteria decision analysis (in particular the PROMETHEE outranking method) in combination with population model analysis can assist in conservation biological decision-making.