Cooperative considerations for a mobile resource that transcends property boundaries

There are environmental advantages to the commercial harvesting of kangaroo over domestic stock. Kangaroo, however, are able to jump fences and move among properties with ease. Consequently, questions of ownership and the equitable distribution of profits arise. We model a cooperative where two neighboring ranches experience rainfall equally but asynchronously each year. A kangaroo population roams freely among the properties to graze. Through harvesting, the population can be regarded as constant. In a cooperative, the location at which harvesting occurs is irrelevant but significant differences in the consumption of resources will affect the profit sharing arrangements between the property owners. Results indicate that the resources consumed on each property with the same total primary production may differ depending on the timing of rainfall. On average, however, the population consumption on each property is independent of the intra-annual differences in rainfall distribution and hence primary production.