Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 30, Pages 12554-12559Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1013919108
Keywords
stocking panacea; wild population collapse; angler satisfaction; social-ecological model; cultural ecosystem service
Categories
Funding
- German Ministry for Education and Research, Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Community [01UU0907]
- National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Eawag Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology Actionfield
- Swiss Federal Office for the Environment
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We explored the social and ecological outcomes associated with emergence of a management panacea designed to govern a stochastic renewable natural resource. To that end, we constructed a model of a coupled social-ecological system of recreational fisheries in which a manager supports naturally fluctuating stocks by stocking fish in response to harvest-driven satisfaction of resource users. The realistic assumption of users remembering past harvest experiences when exploiting a stochastically fluctuating fish population facilitates the emergence of a stocking-based management panacea over time. The social benefits of panacea formation involve dampening natural population fluctuations and generating stability of user satisfaction. It also maintains the resource but promotes the eventual replacement of wild fish by hatchery-descended fish. Our analyses show this outcome is particularly likely when hatchery-descended fish are reasonably fit (e.g., characterized by similar survival relative to wild fish) and/or when natural recruitment of the wild population is low(e.g., attributable to habitat deterioration), which leaves the wild population with little buffer against competition by stocked fish. The potential for release-based panacea formation is particularly likely under user-based management regimes and should be common in a range of social-ecological systems (e.g., fisheries, forestry), whenever user groups are entitled to engage in release or replanting strategies. The net result will be the preservation of a renewable resource through user-based incentives, but the once natural populations are likely to be altered and to host nonnative genotypes. This risks other ecosystem services and the future of wild populations.
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