Exploitation and containment of invasive predators and native prey: A bioeconomic framework for balancing resource use and ecological risk

Invasive alien species pose major ecological and socio-economic challenges, especially when they exert strong predation pressure on native resources while offering opportunities for commercial use. Addressing this dual role requires models that integrate ecological dynamics, economic incentives, and institutional policies. This paper develops a general bioeconomic framework for a predator–prey system subject to human interventions. The native resource is harvested for economic purposes, while the invasive predator can be controlled through both commercial exploitation and institutional removal. The analysis combines equilibrium methods and optimal control over finite horizons, capturing the interaction between long-run ecological regimes and short-term management objectives. The results characterize threshold conditions for species coexistence and identify how harvesting and institutional removal affect the ecological regimes of the system. The analysis shows that moderate exploitation of the invasive predator can enlarge the coexistence region, whereas eradication requires removal efforts exceeding its intrinsic growth rate. The optimal control analysis highlights the role of coordinated management instruments, with numerical results indicating that mixed market and institutional strategies outperform single-instrument policies. The framework is inspired by the interaction between the invasive blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) and native bivalves in Mediterranean coastal systems, and points to policy strategies that integrate ecological conservation, economic valorisation, and institutional containment.