A blueprint for addressing conflicts between ecotourism and farming from an economic perspective: The case of wintering crane conservation in the Hula Valley in Israel

Economic studies on human-wildlife conflicts often apply valuation methods to show that biodiversity conservation generates benefits also from an economic point of view. These studies are useful, but by focusing solely on the monetary benefits of conservation, they neglect that conservation often leads to costs for others which may be the very reason for the conflict. In the current study, we combined an assessment of the marginal benefits of conservation with an assessment of its marginal costs and were thus able to derive what economists call the “optimal level of conservation”. Our focus was the conflict between ecotourism and farming activities and our case study was the conservation of wintering cranes in the Agamon Park in the Hula Valley, Israel. We estimated the marginal benefits of crane conservation to tourism by using the travel-cost method, and the marginal costs by collecting cost data of guarding the agricultural fields and providing alternative feeding options for the cranes. We found that the optimal number of wintering cranes in the Agamon Park, in terms of net benefits to society, is 40,600. We also found that the entrance fee to the reserve, needed to fund the costs of protection from the cranes, is 6.20 ILS (1.88 USD). Our study may serve as a blueprint for identifying and designing policy solutions, using an economic perspective, to conflicts between ecotourism and farming which exist in many protected areas around the world.