The economic costs of biological predation

• Main Authors: Ola Flaaten, Kenneth Stollery
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Norway; minke whale
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00340654

This paper developes a bioeconomic model to analyse the economic losses from the reduced harvesting of prey species resulting from an increase in the stock of a natural predator. Examples of large mammals creating economic damage are whales and African elephants. The economic losses depend critically on the actual management of the prey stock, although the three measures we develop are equal when the stock is managed so as to maximize the sustained economic rent from the prey species. Predation losses are illustrated by the case of the Northeastern Atlantic Minke whale, where the estimate of the average predation cost per whale in 1991–1992 is between $US 1780 and $US 2370, using Norwegian cost and earnings data. A ten percent stock increase is estimated to cause a loss of almost $US 19 million to the fishers of the prey species. If half of this cost were assigned to Norway it would be equivalent to 2.8 and 6.7 percent of the gross profits of the Norwegian cod and herring fisheries, respectively. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1996 bioeconomics, multispecies models, predation costs, Minke whale