  We examine a conservation problem in which the recovery of an endangered
species depends on a captive breeding and reintroduction program. The model is
applied to the case of the black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes), an
endangered species in North America reliant on captive breeding for survival.
The timing of reintroduction is an important concern in these programs as there
is a tradeoff between the duration (and therefore the cost) of the captive
breeding program and the period the population spends in recovery and in the
wild. In this paper, we develop a stylized bioeconomic model to determine the
optimal reintroduction time, in which the objective is to minimize the cost of
reintroduction while providing a viably-sized population in the wild. Our
control variable is the timing of reintroduction, which departs from a large
body of work in bioeconomics that focuses on adjustable controls that directly
affect the target population. Generally, we find it is optimal to reintroduce
ferrets early in a reintroduction program, although this result is contingent
on species interactions and provisioning services.
