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There is now available within Virginia Tech (12/1998) a Graduate Specialization program for
graduate
students and faculty. The Office of International Research and Development and the Committee overseeing this program want
this opportunity to be widely publicized. For details on registration,
please call Martha Bower of OIRD at (540-231-6338) or e-mail
(bower@vt.edu). For details on the program, please call Dr. S. K. De
Datta, Director of OIRD at (540-231-6338) or e-mail (dedatta@vt.edu) or see the program description at http://www.vt.edu:10021/.
Overview
The following is a unit about modern wildlife management as it may be applied and developed within developing countries. Because wildlife management is potentially so complex and means so many things to so many people, the author first defines it, emphasizes that it is a decision science, and provides a structure that can be used by managers in working their way through problems and complex situations typical within wildlife management. That structure and approach is one of "general systems theory." Relying on over 30 years of wildlife management experience, the author presents 37 "rules" for wildlife managers making decisions within developing countries. The concepts here were presented during 5 years at the Smithsonian Institute school for international workers, Front Royal, Va.
Definition
Wildlife management is Introduction to the General System
Note that an emphasis is on decisions.
Decisions are systems.
A general system is as shown in Fig. 1.
Inputs to decision systems are very important. (But no more so than other parts.) "We do not have enough data" is only meaningful when we have all of the other parts of the system. Good data and bad processing (e.g. using a statistical test improperly; using a computer when a calculator is best) are as bad for the wildlife resource (perhaps worse) than limited data and good processors.
Unclear objectives are equally as bad. Much money can be spent with no returns on such investments if the objectives or end uses for such data are not clear from the beginning.
Monitoring and corrective actions (feedback) are essential. Without it, years
Fig. 1. A diagram of a general system, the basis of a systems approach to wildlife management. The context implies that all systems are subsystems.
can go by and large data collections made and all may be wasted. Continual adjustment and adaptation are needed. Adaptive work is needed with all parts of the system.
Processes are essential system components. "Garbage in-garbage out" is usually a joke about systems. Not very funny, few people realize that "garbage data" can be processed and cleaned, sorted, recycled, and value extracted. The computer has great processing power. Creative processes are well known and needed in wildlife management. "I discovered a new way to do it" is a pronouncement about a new process. The resources, the objectives, the inputs did not change, only a process.
Feedforward is a managerial and design action. It brings predictions and estimates (scenarios) about the future into the present as special kind or input. The feedforward process makes the system wrong now, wrong at some future date, but most right over the long-run. The future cannot be known. If the future is likely to be exactly like the past, then the proper feedforward says "keep doing what you are doing." If change is coming, then a systems-oriented person will start revising programs and projects now. As if hunting, the manager "leads the target."
Rules
Partially for brevity, partially to communicate in the most straight-forward way possible, the author following Rules are presented as first principles of action. Each can be discussed at great length and references cited for most of them. The emphasis is on combining energetics, ecology, esthetics, and economics (Fig. 2) into one decision- oriented system, one that achieves stated human objectives by means of the wildlife resource.
Rule 1. Think systems. Use general systems theory to analyze and design systems. Use the theory to improve communication, unify efforts, and improve effectiveness.
Rule 2. Inputs (data) are valuable only to the degree that the whole system is developed. To have 3 items with data, correct to the third decimal point, and to have 50 other influential factors about which there are no data)is unwise for the wildlife systems manager.
Rule 3. Everything happens in space. Wildlife and people interact in space. That space is 3 dimensional. There are 4 universal elements with which to develop theory, techniques, and programs. See Fig. 4.
Rule 4. Ecology may be multi-dimensional (n-dimensions) but at least there are three key ones--latitude, longitude, and elevation. Knowledge of these 3 alone give great decision power.
Fig. 3. The four E's of wildlife resource system design and management. These provide an organizational framework, a structural checklist for the major topics of wildlife management thought and action.
Fig. 4. The fundamental units of space for wildlife, and people, useful both for analyzing and for designing habitats (or minimizing impacts from other developments.)
Rule 5. Space "area" as a factor in wildlife decisions overpowers almost all other variables and their statistics. Is it more important to know the natality is 1.6 or 1.7 or to know the area is 800,000 ha or 850,000 ha?
Rule 6. More things in nature are well correlated than most people realize. For example, you can get slope by knowing the elevations in an area ; land aspect (the direction that slope faces) from knowing elevations (See Appendix 5); temperature from latitude and elevation ; shadows from latitude and elevation. Animal weight changes annually in sine wave.
Rule 7. Based on preliminary modes (e.g., knowledge that you can calculate wilting point, field capacity, and saturation capacity of soil if you only have "proportion of clay") get the data while anyone is afield (no division of labor; do not leave it to an agronomist.) If you find a table of 10 columns of land use data and now only need 1 column, take it all. The major costs were in finding the table. The other data (assuming it is reasonably relevant and of high quality), will likely be used in complex models later.
This is not an argument to measure everything, then to see what data fit or are correlated. Rather it is an argument to do general modeling like "Eventually I want to be able to predict the effects offirewood use on the edible meat harvestable from species x on area A on a sustained basis." A decision on this statement alone allows creative data collection to begin (and to be limited.)
Rule 8. You only need a few key data to know (or estimate very well) many important variables.
Rule 9. There is no known way (no decision rule) to stop increasing the complexity of biological and wildlife models. More data will always appear on the horizon and more need increased. With new data will come requirements for more assumptions and the awareness of new potential errors in predictions. "More data are needed" is a bad rule because its partner expression is: "With more data come more assumptions."
Rule 10. Good guessing is not a bad idea because: Rule 11. Use a beta approach when in doubt.
Ask experts for highest estimates a; lowest, c; and most likely, b. Then use D = (a + 4b + c)/6. Use D in management as being of maximum likelihood. You may not know grain yields but you might say lowest is 10 units, highest is 250, and most likely is 180. Using the above then estimate that the units of grain produced will be 163 units.
Rule 12. Find out the biological-ecological limits in your area (or the world) e.g. calories/gram of biomass; kilocalories/ha; max elevation; max-min latitudes of your area. Use them to prevent absurd estimates from good equations.
Rule 13. Collect data on elevation (distance above sea level).
Rule 14. Build a collection of models so that if you know x you can compute y. Models (equations) are intensified data; high-density information, decision-making power.
Rule 15. Assemble and register (so all places can be compared) all possible maps of your area(s) (especially contour maps, but at least maps with a few known elevations.)
Rule 16. Study zones of influence. See Fig. 5. Each spot (e.g. a waterhole) has a zone of influence for animals. It attracts them or serves the population within an area. These zones can be mapped. See Giles (1985). Roads, trails, and streams also have a zone that can be mapped. These are important for the manager to see the extent (7O) of coverage of the area by these zones. Field staff can estimate or study the width (radius) of the zones.
Fig. 5. A pond or wildlife waterhole may have a zone of influence, an area in which animals are influenced significantly by its presence. Similarly, roads, trails, and streams may have zones.
Rule 17. Make exclusion maps first. Where animals or plants do not or cannot occur is often more instructive than general ranges (e.g. never above 1000 m; never on steep slopes; never more than 500 m from water; never in or near (less than 100 m) cities.)
Rule 18. Organize the knowledge of your spatial system. There are so many factors, good organization is essential. Use the fundamental interactive spheres. See Fig. 6.
Rule 19. Attempts to learn about periods and amplitudes of time. See Fig. 7. Everything is not cyclic (with equal periods and equal amplitude). "Cyclic" in wildlife usually relates to relative differences in abundance in regular periods.
Rule 20. Map changes in habitats, populations, and people over time (e.g., where large trees will be in 20 years if certain practices and policies are achieved.)
Rule 21. Things at different places have different periods (e.g., frost-free days).
Rule 22. A period is time in which processing occurs. The key ecological process is ecosystem succession. Systems tend toward common pathways toward total biomass and energy-fixing surfaces. There may be fair amounts of variation early in succession but little occurs late.
Rule 23. Succession is the pattern in biomass change over time in. Learn its rates in representative areas. Graph it as in Fig. 8.
Rule 24. Food biomass is highly substitutable. The more food-sized species present, the easier it is on a predator since substitution is easy. The fewer, suitable food supplies or species, the more difficult it is for a predator. Total feeding units (abundance) and their accessibility determine food biomass.
Rule 25. Determine a systems performance index. Examples may be deer sighted per hour, average kilograms of forage per plot, muskrat lodges per sq. km. etc. Better is a complex mathematical index, Q, that is a function of (perhaps only the simple addition of) 4 or 5 variables. Graph (Fig. 9) how you (or those whom you serve) want Q to progress over time.
Rule 26. Work toward a computerized geographic information system (feedforward.) "No computer is now available" is a poor excuse for not beginning now.
Rule 27. Use a square cell system. Use the Universal Transverse Mercator map projection because (1) it is square, (2) reasonably undistorted, and (3) is the projection used in LANDSAT, the major international system for high elevation imagery of the Earth's surface.
Rule 28. Develop maps and transparent map overlays first. Then move toward computer mapping.
Rule 29. Select a 1/3-km grid cell width. Each map cell will be 1/9th km , 10 ha, or about 27 acres.) Start with this cell size. Other sizes will be needed later; with development of computer programs, the cell size become immaterial. For example if some factor x is related as follows:
x = 1.263 Elevation 2.4
then any- point at which the elevation is known can be inserted, not just the elevations at the center of every l/9th square kilometer cell, and the value of x estimated.
Rule 30. Attempt to do wildlife management on a watershed basis. Use 3rd or 4th order watersheds. It may not be practical as the fundamental unit (a forest stand or rangeland community probably is) but it will reduce surprises and risks from unexpected uphill and downstream effects of activities on wildlife (and wildlife management effects on others.) The watershed approach to wildlife management is difficult in limestone areas (karst) and coastal areas, but a good code for an information system and readily broken into cells or "stands" or arbitrary units or areas within zones of influence.
Rule 31. Collect data on relevant sex and age groups (life forms.) There is often more difference among groups within a species than between species and even some genera. For example a young wild turkey is a 1/2 kg insectivore; an adult is a 10 kg granivore.
Rule 32. Convert data to information. Many factors are used to determine an index (e.g., an approximate expression of cropland primeness ) or an optimum corridor for where to place powerlines that minimize environmental impact.
Rule 33. Combine word and numerical data bases and information systems with (a) library systems, and (b) geographic information systems. The "Procedures" system is an on-line wildlife data base operated by (storage, searching, and retrieval) a large data base management system (e.g. Spires). Each creature has about 250 factors or storage fields reserved for it. It responds to questions like: what reptiles, that are endangered, that occur in region A or B but not C, that are associated with pines, eat birds?"
Fig. 5. The four major components of the natural system with which the wildlife manager must work. Some workers prefer to add a socio-or homosphere. I prefer to see it as a subsystem of the biosphere, given the total interactions depicted by the system.
Fig. 6. Amplitude and period of change are important time dimensions.
Fig. 7. Succession follows major disturbances like floods, fire, and plowing. The curve describing the factor (2 are shown here) allows a time-specific map to be made for example of forage at age 40.
Fig. 8. Various expressions of objectives can be made and these graphed. The concept is that starting now, what are the desired changes? The graph of Q over time is the objective 9B. Thorough management, the objective can be closely approximated by working with areas and succession.
Rule 34. Develop entire computer-produced reports (word processor) that use changing data, branching, and standard texts to produce unique reports. The reports, large books, are like newspapers (throw away) but the system is dynamically changing (the CAPS concept.)
Rule 35. Use a specialized computer-based library to retrieve articles on a word in the title, in a list of key words, a word in the abstract, or the author. This can be combined with other information, supporting maps and text reports. Combine a local "articles and reprints" system with searches on international systems (e.g., Dialog).
Rule 36. Plan on how to stabilize the information system once it is developed. A feedforward task, staff, funding, hardware, and software must be stabilized. It needs to be combined with broadly interested public groups, cooperative multi-country systems, or made a private enterprise. Information is power. Public officers may fear systems that may reduce their personal power. They may abolish a well developed system. Protecting systems from such political forces is an important act. An international group can provide some protection; location as a judiciary service (a means for the courts to decide on cases or reduce caseload) may help; a free enterprise may work in some countries. In some places an activist private group (e.g., U.S. Sierra Club) might be a good keeper-of-the-system.
Rule 37. Push information toward complex problem solving, not simple input-output work. Develop simulations and optimizations and expect systems to allow the most powerful exploitation of the expensive to collect and store information. We need to know what will happen if an action is taken Use simulation! We need to know what combinations of actions and in what amounts are needed to achieve a specific objective. Use optimization!
Literature
Conant, F. P. Rogers, M. Baumgardner, C. McKell, R. Dasmann, and P. Reining. (Eds.) 1983. Resource inventory and baseline study methods for developing countries. Amer. Assoc. Adv. of Science, Washington, D.C. xxv + 539 pp
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1978. Wildlife Management. W. H. Freeman Co., San Francisco, Ca. x + 416 pp.
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1985. A method for optimum spacing of wildlife water developments. Wildl. Soc. Bull.
making decisions and taking actions
to manipulate the structure, dynamics and relations
of populations, faunal space, and people
to achieve specific human objectives
by means of the wildlife resource.
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Last revision January 17, 2000.