Understanding the impact of removing a fence between two game ranches with different management objectives

When two adjacent properties have opposing management strategies for the same resource, problems arise regarding equitable benefits. This raises questions relating to the equitable distribution of economic benefits of such resources. The issues relate to the conflicting management objectives of these resources such as consumption versus non-consumption. In this study, we consider these problems in the context of potential commercial harvesting and environmental conservation of African wildlife. To obtain a better understanding of the implications of these problems, we investigated a scenario where two neighbouring properties were engaged in a co-operative and non-coopertive enterprise respectively. This paper describes modeling the movement of animals in an African environment on neighbouring properties with and without a common fence, which implies cooperative and non-cooperative regimes. This analysis was based on the assumption that the species distribute themselves according to the Ideal Free Distribution (IFD). We found that when the fence is removed, the returns from the non-consumptive tourism enterprise is decreased due to the animal migration to the neighbouring property, which has a lower density of animals because of removal from hunting. Ths model provided insight into the effect of migration on the profits for both landowners. Using a model to explore these factors we find that there is an optimal solution to the problem of the equitable distribution of returns for both landowners.