Optimal short-term policies for protection of single biological species from local extinction

This work introduces a finite-horizon bioeconomic growth model that links the biological evolution of a single species with the capital accumulation dynamics. The model is formulated as a problem of optimal control with non-consumptive objective regarding the biological species. The application of the Pontryaginʹs maximum principle allows designing a decision policy for short-term optimal planning and converts the optimal control problem to a two-point boundary value problem. The latter is then solved numerically using the MATLAB routine bvp4c. The results of numerical simulations suggest the existence of optimal policies capable to enhance even (initially) scarce species populations within a finite period of time. This supplements previous studies of various scholars where such policies were designed for infinite horizon and required initial abundance of the species.