Forest Faunal Systems

Chapter 15

The Guild Alternative

An ecological guild is a group of animals that exploits the same class of resources in a similar way (e.g., tree-bole-feeding birds). "Guild", however, is a word with a very long-standing alternative use meaning a superior group of workers, experts in a field. The word may be a useful flag over a concept for management of a forest species. It is a concept for the private land owner that is single-species oriented, and countervenes the multiple-use and multiple-species mantra. It is an alternative to current state-agency, tax-supported managerial action. There are many management programs within forest industries for the eastern wild turkey (Melagris gallopavo Linneaus). These programs are fairly well known. The programs outside those of the forest industries are few and poorly known. There are industries with forested lands that are not active in managing their lands for wood-based profits. These, for example, are the large incorporated private owner, the corporate-owned coal fields, agribusiness ownerships, utility and railroad lands, and in some cases military lands. The guild concept described in this chapter is believed to apply to these industrial and corporate lands as well as to vast, publicly owned areas which are never included in analyses of "wildlife lands." These include land of prisons, schools, museums, and state-owned military lands. In Virginia, for example, there are over 130,000 acres of such lands. Hereinafter, this very heterogeneous group of land-ownerships will be called the corporations. I want to characterize the special problems of these lands to outline the potentials for wild turkey management on them, and to describe the guild concept.

It is clear that wild turkeys occur widely throughout the forests of the eastern U.S. There are no problems for industry of being outside of its range or trying to extend the range beyond some biological or ecological barrier (as there are for ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus c. colchicus). There are no major problems of availability of stock or ability to secure introductions if needed. Techniques of habitat management are fairly well-known and widely used, and local demonstrations of effectiveness are available near to most corporations throughout the region. Populations are stable, increasing, or expanding over the range. Some corporations actively manage turkeys. Some allow state funds to be spent on their lands for turkey habitat improvement and population protection. Corporations, by almost any set of criteria, perceive no wild turkey problem, but people who love wild turkeys, for whatever reason, and at whatever level of intensity, perceive a problem. They perceive that there are insufficient turkeys. The corporations have no turkey problem; the turkeys have no problem; only those who love wild turkeys or wild turkey hunting have a problem.

One solution to such a problem is to tell someone to do on corporation lands just what is done on forest-industry lands. That has not worked, or not very well, and for good reasons. To whom does one speak in a corporation? Who is told to develop a turkey management program? It is hard enough to find this person in a state or federal agency or forest industry. The corporation is usually not organized to handle such requests or proposals. There is no easy solution to this, but, as strange as it may seem, "buildings and grounds" is the place to start in some companies, "real estate" in another, "security" in others, and in some there are departments for the environment and lands management. Past failures to develop programs may have been due to wildlife managers not having enough imagination, time, or energy to identify the right person. That person is the managerial decision maker. Not always the board chairperson or president, the person to be sought in the corporation is the one who decides (a) "this won't hurt and it may help" or (b) "this is a good program", and carries it into the executive arena. In some small corporations that person does not exist and never will. There are corporations headed by people who just will not take time to consider turkey management. There are others who are anti-hunters that will have nothing to do with a game bird. Others see a vast array of problems so overpowering they will not pause to consider benefits or potentials.

These, among other observations, are convincing that corporation wild turkey management is not a biological problem (or only trivially so) but an organizational, economic, and personnel problem. Whether wildlife agencies, national organizations such as the Wild Turkey Federation, or other groups solve the problem by classical biological approaches (Giles 1978:333), remains to be seen. My hypothesis is that they cannot, and so an alternative is needed.

The Agency

Hereinafter, the phrase turkey agency will mean a local, state, or federal wildlife group that is devoted to some aspects of turkey management. There needs to exist very early a dialogue within the turkey agency, whether it be public or private. A question exists of markets and how agencies are to allocate very limited resources. Should resources be devoted to federal, state, private or other lands and programs and, if so, in what proportion? Once decided (and an active, conscious decision should be made, not merely allowed to happen), then the corporation decision makers can be addressed, for they want to know: why me? why the new interest? what are the benefits? how do I fit in? what are the costs and risks? how stable is the program? If I move in the direction of the guild concept, will you, agency, get in the way later? What might be your regulations? The agency's self-evaluations will enable answers to the questions about where a corporation fits into a regional wild turkey management program.

It seems important from the outset to evaluate the extent of the corporation management potential. The managerial question for the agency should be first: what if I were 100 percent successful with the corporation wild turkey management program? What if a private corporation, not the agency, became the lead managerial group promoting a turkey-related system? What would be its extent and influence? What, if not 100 percent, is a reasonable expectation of success? The corporate lands are a rumbling volcano of potential turkey production resource benefit (if not turkeys themselves). The area is difficult to assess and detailed data are likely to cost much more than they are worth to collect them. See Clawson (1979). A sense of the relative potential comes from turkey range maps (Aldrich 1967) and forest land data of the relevant states (USDA Forest Service 1978). About 15 percent of the U.S. land area has the potential for significant turkey populations. Within that range, about 60 percent is privately owned. Of that, about 90 percent (USDA Forest Service 1978:5) are corporation lands. Thus, a management program for 50 percent of the potential turkey range is in sight!

Given that lands under forest-industry control are only about 9 percent of the private forest lands, and using the concept of the extremum, (i.e., asking what might happen at 100 percent success) then total success on forest-industry lands would represent success on less than 1 percent of the turkey range. Total success on U.S. Forest Service and state-land would be even less. A more significant solution is needed and that is why the guild concept has been devised for the corporation.

Past turkey research and management have yielded success on lands where managerial controls and the decision maker have been relatively well-known. Now a corporation programs is in order. If agencies are quite serious about major expansions in wild turkey populations, for whatever purposes, then it is reasonable to initiate a program for the corporations.

But why corporations? Why not other private landowners? They are not to be excluded, but there are 4.5 million timberland owners in the U.S. There is no way to determine how many are in the wild turkey areas, but it is probably over 3 million. Many have very small tracts of land. These owners can be approached as they have been for years. Computer aids can be employed to assist them. The strategic question is: how can a program be created from which success (at least expressed in large stable turkey populations and associated profits or benefits over large areas) may be achieved at the lowest possible costs? Clearly 3 million people cannot be sold such a program very quickly, even if the patch-quilt results would be meaningful. Dr. Harry Haney observed that in Georgia, only about 2 percent of forest owners controlled one-third of the land area. The corporations are the target, the solution to maximum acres in intensive turkey system management in the least time for the lowest cost.

The Objectives

The objectives of a turkey management program are easily mixed and such mixing may block very good intentions. One way to reduce the chance of failure is to ask continually: whose objectives (meaning which decision makers)? Asked in this way, there are at least three distinct major objectives depending upon other objectives of this organization and its decision makers:

1. Corporation - to maximize the set of weighted benefits to the corporation from a turkey management program. Note: (l) an increase in birds is not specified; (2) benefits to hunters are not specified; (3) investments are made in a total program so benefits can be counted, not only from birds, but from all other results from the program; (4) importance of various benefits are weighted by the corporation. An average or public value is not required because there is one decision maker; and (5) net profit is likely.

2. State Agency - (l) to prevent turkey extermination; (2) to maximize turkey populations on state-owned and cooperatively-managed lands; (3) to assist others in turkey management any way possible; (4) to gain knowledge about turkeys through research.

3. Private - (l) to maximize healthy wild turkey populations throughout the U.S.; (2) to maximize quality wild turkey hunting opportunities; and (3) to maximize profits (net present discounted benefits) from turkey-related, mixed financial investments.

Some actions within a program may serve all three sets of objectives. One program will not solve all three; in fact, it will produce conflicts! Once the landowner's decision is made about the objectives, alternative pathways may be seen, created, and selected, without the system becoming a victim of "accepted methods", "proven technique", and other traps. Clearly-defined ends have a way of generating their own means. For a corporation to be successful, its staff actions must be oriented to corporate objectives. Agency objectives may exist, but they need not be broadcast. As long as corporation objectives seem likely to be met, a program is likely to be accepted. When they are met, it will be judged successful.

Problem Analysis

In addition to the decision-maker problem, there are many reasons why there are so few corporation programs in wildlife management, particularly those for the wild turkey.

1. Lack of Awareness - Few people in the corporation have noted that there are potentials, a problem, or opportunities. There is no negative or hostile feeling, only a lack of awareness, even in some cases an awareness that there are wild turkey populations on an ownership.

2. Lack of Expertise - Even where there is awareness, there has been no ready source to whom to turn, or responsive sources.

3. Unresponsive Agencies - This has been due, not to a lack of interest, but misunderstanding of state and federal land jurisdiction, prior commitments of funds and time, lack of expertise in wild turkey management, and policy decisions (and "indecisions") about where efforts will be focused.

4. Concern Over High Program Costs - Where benefits or values are unknown, it is easy to fear unexpected costs. When no conspicuous benefits are seen, a benefit-cost analysis (any cost) will always be very low.

5. Fragmented Efforts - Making food plantations on powerlines for turkeys, for example, is an excellent technique, but managerially costly and of limited, long-term impact to large areas. There just have not been the resources to undertake similar projects very widely, or to diversify projects in a designed set of optimally-effective projects.

6. The Agencies' Efficiency and Effectiveness Quandary - The leading sources of faunal resource management knowledge and funds have been agencies, and it has been natural to allocate these to areas where the decision maker is known, the areas large, the controls probable, and the potentials payoffs relative to investment high over the long run. The wildlife management agency's tradeoffs have been made between the strategies of: (a) high control, large tracts, public land responsibility, and guaranteed access, and (b) lower control, large areas, private landowner responsibilities, potentials for limited access, and potential large investments of funds.

In summary, there are few corporate land management programs and those that exist are fragmented. There are many good reasons why this is true but the future holds the promise of new options.

A Corporate Program

The managerial mind of the faunal system manager is prone to become active when confronted with the above situation. Given a set of factors and clear objectives, then one pathway for creative work is: (1) a private organization interested in improving wild turkey populations; (2) a variety of closely-related agencies and programs; (3) a newly-recognized target area of 50 percent of the potential range; (4) an analysis of why the corporation target has not been hit in the past.

The result is the design of a set of alternatives proposed to those interested in wild turkey management. The first alternative is realistic in that no major changes have to be made. The proposal is to encourage and assist agencies in their present on-going programs, allowing corporations to join when they desire to do so, or when public or foundation funds become available. The second alternative: continue as in alternative number 1, but increase research so as to reduce risks, increase confidence in recommendations, and increase chances for useful demonstration areas for corporations and others. The third is a radical departure in wildlife management: form the wild turkey guild. It is proposed to be multi-state, regional, and centralized. It is single-species oriented. Its charge is to operate a corporate program for profit. Its techniques are to be unbounded except by law and annual accountability to the guild directors. It is to be as free as possible of the bureaucracy now suppressing current agency wild turkey programs. The guild is an expression that a large private citizen's group, while influential, can rarely develop the continuous efforts and expertise to achieve complex ends such as those desired. It is an expression that the ends are very important and worth more personal investments than an occasional meeting and disparate activities. The guild is created in recognition that some people do not want, or do not have the time or resources, to become very active on their lands. Thus, the guild can continue to serve their needs as well as those of other people who desire to be more active. The guild is an alternative to committees and private efforts and is proposed because of the magnitude of the task of creating and operating a national corporate program.

The concepts and potentials are only sketched in this chapter. The word " guild" connotes quality workmanship as used within established industries (not the grouping of similar animals as mentioned in Chapter 8). It sails against the long-blowing, strong winds of "multiple use." and the new breezes of "ecosystem management." It is, without apology, single-species oriented because that is precisely what some decision-makers want. The turkey is a species to which monetary returns can be directly, easily, and understandably related, and it is a species requiring large areas with diverse management needs and which can be managed for profit if a sufficient scale of operation is gained (e.g., promotion and services for several corporations).

Only the wild turkey is discussed here, but I have designed similar raccoon (Procyon lotor), deer, and bear guilds. There may be other species with similar potentials. The limitations are the same as those for any successful business, and that is precisely what the guild is.

I have no illusions that all lands will fall under the guild concept. I suspect that few will. The private land owner is very private. Independence is one dimension of owning land. However, there are many land owners who seek recourse to not managing their timber lands which are owned at a distance. They are more desirous of wildlife, quality ecosystems, and esthetics, and continued pride of ownership than new income from wood sale by unsupervised loggers. The concept offers a potential for several landowners in an area to cooperatively achieve an economy of scale and to manage their land as a guild. The guild does not replace the concept of a high quality wildlife management plan and operation on a piece of land, one focusing on multiple species, owners' objectives, etc., as already discussed. The wild turkey guild is, for the skeptic owner, a very conservative strategy. First, there is no monetary loss since fees to the owners from the guild staff are based on difference in profits. If a land-owner experiences no profits from " abandoned" land in the beginning, and the guild fails to produce any profit, then it will make no changes. Turkeys are a long-term proposition. Gains will be made over time, not in short order, thereby avoiding any likely cut-out-and-get-out strategy by a guild. Perhaps the decision making has no basis for deciding on the turkey. Why not hawks or huckleberries? When those guilds are encountered by the corporation, then that decision can be made. (I suspect the financial base for them, as outlined herein, will prevent their emergence, but then ...) The turkey is a safe basis for profit-oriented decisions, perhaps the most safe of any animal in the USA). It requires large areas and requires such a diversity of habitat - grasses, edges, mature mast producers, and protection from disturbance - that, if achieved, the entire range of needs of many other species associated with these habitats will be simultaneously achieved. The habitat proportions will differ from an area managed for a complete fauna, but not by much, and the difference may more reflect managerial ignorance of the needs and potentials of 100 conspicuous species and the turkey than the managers' knowledge. To manage for turkeys is probably to manage well a very large number of game and other species. The guild would initially be capitalized for 3 years. Funding will be based on fees charged to corporations at a rate of 30 to 50 percent of any profit increases which occur as a direct result of the guild's work. Charges are based on increased corporate profits from managing the turkey resource system, not profits alone.

Not one project, the guild is a complex group of managers and staff that operate in the following work areas. It gets all possible corporate and adjacent forest and agricultural lands under long-term managerial contract. Lands are then managed by computer-aided systems to improve land management, improve land value, and to produce profits subject to constraints imposed for optimum local turkey management. The guild is, from one perspective, a large agribusiness management firm. Integrated systems of farm, forest, and range are operated for the corporation, at a profit.

It will be clear to many that the concept is only radical in integrating the best parts of old concepts that have worked, but poorly, into a new approach. The approach:

1. Includes voluntary, private citizen and corporate action;
2. Allows for public agencies to join;
3. Places a profit-motive in wildlife management;
4. Rejects the ambiguous politically inspired "multi-purpose" doctrine employed by some federal agencies;
5. Replaces the multiple-use strategy with an objectives-orientation which is essential in this increasingly crowded, energy-short world.
6. Provides species assistance in tax analyses and gives advice for improved forest land value assessment, for long-term land valuation, for land and water banking, and for agro-energy conservation incentives. Subject to stabilized or improved turkey management, the guild receives a fixed income or 30 percent of taxes saved. These funds are used to stabilize and expand the operation of the guild.
7. Operates with a Foundation. This Foundation is a tax deductible educational and research arm. In union with work area 6 above, computer-aided tax relief is maximized.
8. Operates a cost-effective publishing enterprise to secure special guild objectives, and to provide necessary support for the guild's services to corporations.
9. Provides a land-owner "scoring" service, partially for public relations purposes, partially as a means for corporation officers to evaluate progress being made on their lands. "This corporation's lands are certified by the Wild Turkey Guild to have a score of 76," might be an official statement made as a result of a computer analysis of data about an area after guild experts have completed field analyses. The corporate environmental literature and signs could boast of a score, show progress, or show scores relative to its competitors. Increasingly, such data will have meaning and importance to the corporate stock values. The same scores can be used in environmental impact analyses on corporate lands. A new development on the land might increase or decrease such a score.
10. Provides, at cost, a convenient, highly-effective methodology for assessing environmental effects of proposed corporation changes, on, or off corporation lands.
11. Promotes competition between corporations in turkey management. Use of the above score may be a major part of the competition.
12. Provides full services for operating fee hunting on corporate lands. Similar state or club leases may be provided. Centralized services, high efficiency, impartial administration, experienced procedures, maximized security, and improved hunt quality all increase financial returns to the company from their lands. The fees paid to the guild would be a percentage of the increased profits from such fees. As above, where no fee hunting now exists, hunting fees minus costs may result in achieving broad environmental objectives, corporate profit, and operating funds for the guild.
13. Conducts special shows, workshops, and educational events, at cost, for the corporation on their lands to communicate to workers, unions, corporate executives, and local citizens the program, the progress, and related land management interests.
14. Arranges for special advertising services for corporations to assure maximum payoffs for turkey-related investments.
15. Promotes formation of corporate wild turkey cooperatives to allow large area management, improve hunting opportunities, achieve desired habitat interspersion and stabilize populations, and secure significant economies of scale in managerial service (Smart et al. 1972), labor, equipment, supplies, and contractual services.
16. Provides, at cost, unique law enforcement services including work load analyses and optimal deployment of agents (Cowles 1979), effective educational and behavioral modification schemes (Beattie 1979), and area and transportation system designs. This is an effort to overcome the major detrimental role of the illegal kill of turkeys (Blakey 1937, Flemming and Speake 1976:384).
17. Creates a highly competitive national program called the Guild Stalker. Individuals purchase applications and materials from the guild and begin an arduous educational, hunting, wildlife knowledge, safety, and wildland ethics course. Hunters and others may achieve various levels of success, the latter of which permits hunting and observation privileges on scored, corporate lands. The program includes opportunities for youth.
18. Clearly turkey oriented, the guild also presents reports to each member corporation about all other environmental benefits from the program to songbirds, erosion control, riparian vegetation protection, and benefits to game populations. These reports may be used by them for many other benefits. The other "extras" are part of the many benefits that the corporation would experience as a result of work of the guild.
19. Seeks to create a special multi-state turkey hunter's license so hunters may utilize various corporate lands and turkey population opportunities.
20. Provides for ornithology groups (or individuals), at cost, guided trips to add the wild turkey to the life list of observers.
21. Operates several major corporate hunting lodges that enable significant, high-quality turkey hunting to be experienced by executives and special friends of the corporations.
22. Provides a modern wildland fire management system for each corporation.
23. Provides a detailed turkey management plan for each corporation based in part on Hollis (1948), Donohoe and Mikibben (1970:23-30), Gardner et al. (1972), Powers (1979), Hillestad and Speake (1970), Wright and Speake (1975), Graf and Giles (1974), Giles et al. (1979).
24. Provides a special user's insurance and corporate insurance package to assure minimal liability or other risks for personal and structural accidents.

The above actions are those potential for the guild. I do not know if such a group exists, but I think it can and should. Even if it is never implemented, at least the concept suggests that there are a few options to current agency and corporate wild turkey management in the U.S. (Similarly, they suggest a pattern, a general system for other species or species groups such as furbearers.)

Given the limited intensity of turkey management on federal and state lands and the more limited intensity on forest-industry lands, then more might be expected elsewhere if the constraints of these groups could be escaped. The millions of private landowners cannot be contacted, reasonably, in any meaningful period. To spend a meaningless small 2 days with each landowner would require a team of 10 biologists 3,000 working-years just for the first contact! An option to that ridiculous scenario is to work with corporations wherein a few decision makers control vast areas of turkey habitat.

It is useless, in my experience with a variety of corporations, to make requests of the general public to improve conditions for turkeys. These requests have no basis in benefits and costs. Many people are quite willing to contribute to society, to forego some profits, to make large contributions, and to be of general assistance, but they desire the hard, cold facts of benefits and costs.

Dr. Henry Mosby was instrumental in restoring the wild turkey to the Eastern US.

The guild is a practical means by which reasons for past failures, or limited corporate success, can be countered. It will require initial direct support or "stock" sales, but can become self-sustaining as well as "profitable" (in the sense of an expanding program of action and research). It is thought to be a new concept in wildlife management with potentials for leadership in other species management. While development costs are needed, no new technological or conceptual breakthroughs are needed. No key facts are missing to begin. It is based on financial land management, computer-aided so as to maximize long term net gains, but it does not require the"worth of a bird "to be quantified. It is site specific, as well as regional and national in scope. It is centralized for information and service but decentralized for being implemented on the land (as proposed by Giles and Scott (1969) for the U.S. Wildlife Refuge System). The effects of the wild turkey guild, if created, will surely be felt on all forest faunal resources. Its effects on the wild turkey resource and all who can benefit from it are likely to be very great.

References

This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision May 8, 2001.