Bulletin of Mathematical Biology (2008) 70: 2039–2054 DOI 10.1007/s11538-008-9343-0 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Optimal Dynamic Allocation of Conservation Funding Among Priority Regions Michael Bode a,∗ , Kerrie Wilson b , Marissa McBride c , Hugh Possingham d a Applied Environmental Decision Analysis Research Facility, School of Botany, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Melbourne, 3010, Australia b The Nature Conservancy, Suite 304, 60 Leicester St., Carlton, Melbourne, 3053, Australia c Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis, School of Botany, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Melbourne, 3010, Australia d The Ecology Centre, School of Integrative Biology, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, 4072, Australia Received: 11 November 2007 / Accepted: 29 April 2008 / Published online: 20 August 2008 © Society for Mathematical Biology 2008 Abstract The optimal allocation of conservation resources between biodiverse conser- vation regions has generally been calculated using stochastic dynamic programming, or using myopic heuristics. These solutions are hard to interpret and may not be optimal. To overcome these two limitations, this paper approaches the optimal conservation resource allocation problem using optimal control theory. A solution using Pontryagin’s maximum principle provides novel insight into the general properties of efficient conservation re- source allocation strategies, and allows more extensive testing of the performance of my- opic heuristics. We confirmed that a proposed heuristic (minimize short-term loss) yields near-optimal results in complex allocation situations, and found that a qualitative alloca- tion feature observed in previous analyses (bang-bang allocation) is a general property of the optimal allocation strategy. Keywords Optimal control · Conservation resource allocation 1. Introduction Conservation organizations do not have enough resources to address the myriad threats facing the world’s biodiversity (James et al., 1999; Balmford et al., 2003). Recogniz- ing this resource limitation, various conservation organizations have identified sets of “priority regions,” which typically contain disproportionately large numbers of threat- ened and endemic species relative to their size (Brooks et al., 2006). The objec- tive of these priority regions is to guide the allocation of limited conservation fund- ing, such that the least biodiversity is lost through extinction (Myers et al., 2000; ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: bodem@unimelb.edu.au (Michael Bode).