Sumatran Tiger Conservation · POMDP Interactive Demo

When to stop managing or surveying cryptic species

You are a conservation manager faced with a Sumatran tiger population of unknown status. Should you survey to gather information, manage to improve persistence, or surrender resources to other priorities? The optimal strategy depends on your belief about whether the species still exists.

The Problem (Chadès et al. 2008)

Species status: The tiger population is either extant (still present) or extinct (gone forever). Extinction is irreversible.
3 actions each year:
- Survey (78% detection if extant, 0% if extinct) — learn species status with high reliability; natural persistence (90%)
- Manage — invest in protection to improve persistence to 94%; only 1% incidental detection
- Surrender — stop investing, redirect resources to other priorities
Your belief: You start with 50% probability the species is extant (maximum uncertainty). As you observe (or fail to detect), your belief updates via Bayes' rule.
The decision: When belief in species persistence drops below a critical threshold, it becomes optimal to stop managing and surveying.
Horizon: 10 years of decision-making. Discount rate: 0.95/year.
Keys: 1 Survey · 2 Manage · 3 Surrender · O Optimal replay · R Reset · S Settings

Random Seed

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Human

SCORE0

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Waiting for first action

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Choose an action below. Tigers are last known to be at healthy numbers, but surveys are imperfect.

Choose your action for this step:

Action history

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EXTINCT

The population collapsed at step ?. The hidden world is now revealed.

Hidden World Revealed

End of Horizon — Policy Comparison

What happened across all three runs?