Opportunity costs of alternative management options in a protected nature park: The case of Ramat Hanadiv, Israel

In the last few decades, “natural” open space has been rapidly disappearing, replaced by various land uses, such as agriculture, pastureland and cities. This decline in open space, combined with other processes adversely affecting ecosystems and the environment, highlights the importance of natural open spaces protection. Protected areas enable ecosystems to maintain their ecological integrity, thereby safeguarding many important ecological assets and services provided by ecosystems. The aim of this study is to assess the economic value of multiple ecosystem services (ESs) and the tradeoff between them and species richness across different management alternatives at the protected area of Ramat Hanadiv long term ecological research (LTER) Nature Park, in Israel. Ecological data were retrieved from previous research conducted at the nature park, and the valuation of landscape values was performed using the replacement cost method and a contingent valuation survey. The relationship between ES value and species richness was found to be negative. Of all management alternatives studied, only the planted conifer forest alternative was found to be inefficient; moving to other alternatives would enhance ES provision levels and species richness. This research demonstrates a simple path for providing land managers with an ecological data-based tool for comparing management alternatives in monetary terms.