A unit of Lasting Forests Sustained forests; sustained profits evolving since March 30, 1999

Wild faunal resource management means making decisions and taking actions for changing the structure, dynamics, and relations of faunal spaces, wild animal populations, and people to achieve specific pre-stated human objectives by means of the wild animal resource system.

Major Concepts

1. Wildlife population density, variety, and size of individuals are directly and positively related to high soil fertility.

2. Health of parent animals directly influences egg production, fertility, and hatchability.

3. Most high quality soils are used for purposes other than wildlife production, thus, for example, where farming is intensive, wildlife populations are usually low but production is high).

4. On agricultural lands, game production must usually take lesser priority; that is, it must be treated as a by-product.

5. The normal life expectancy of most small game animals is less than a year; 2-3 years for big game.

6. Wildlife managers deal with and are thus more interested in populations than isolated individual animals.

7. A population decline is rarely due to reduction, only failure of a population to expand as normal.

8. Populations grow to fill all available environments.

9. Abundant wildlife losses occur in nature and are natural and expected.

10. Losses in any given population are relatively constant, no matter what the combination of causes.

11. Small animals have higher death rates than larger animals, also higher birth rates.

12. A high standard of living for game animals can exist only in an under-stocked environment.

13. One population does not drive another out, but populations change in response to changing environments.

14. Each species has a survival margin, some greater than others. Those with a narrow margin must be managed more carefully. The greater the population turnover rate, the wider the margin. (Most small game have a wide margin; the whooping crane, for example, a narrow one and a slow turnover rate).

15. The task of the wildlife manager is to discover what are the best conditions for each species on each area, and then learn how to adjust the number of animals to this limit and to other conditions.

16. Total efforts of wildlife managers must be directed toward producing human benefits or preventing losses through increasing, stabilizing, or decreasing wildlife populations.

17. Managers seeking to increase native populations must manipulate environmental factors so that the population can increase to its fullest.

18. All lands have a measurable capacity to support animals.

19. "Carrying capacity" refers to a land unit (like a volume of water) measured in animal units (like gallons). It is the optimum number of quality animals of a particular species that at any stated time can survive in a given wildlife habitat, without impairing the habitat for future populations.

20. Increasing carrying capacity involves bringing the essentials for animal well-being and survival as close together as possible.

21. As a population approaches carrying capacity, its productivity decreases.

22. After habitat conditions are no longer limiting, social (density-stress), disease, and competitive factors may become active.

23. Many "surplus" animals are produced each year, well above carrying capacity. These animals die or will readily fill abandoned territories.

24. In general, it seems that game production per female increases on hunted areas.

25. Weight (biomass) of animals (game and fish) is a better measure of carrying capacity than number of animals; an area will support many small animals or a fewer large ones.

26. Habitat means home or where animals live. In modern use, habitat (called herein faunal space) means all of the factors that "surround" a population year around including food, cover, climate, and even other animals of the same or different species.

27. Plants are found in recognizable communities. These communities change or follow an orderly sequence of events called succession.

28. Many animals limit their lives to one or a few plant communities.

29. To provide special communities for animals, succession or change of such communities must be set back(or moved forward...or held constant). Cow, plow, fire, axe, flooding, drainage, and herbicides are primary ways of setting back succession. Secondary ways, though of equal or greater importance are taxes, local economics, allotments, industrial activity, etc.

30. Not only the presence or absence of vital elements of the habitat are important but also the arrangement or pattern of these elements.

31. Creating corners, edge volumes, and proper arrangement of plant communities increases both the number and variety of species in an area.

32. Wildlife conditions are easily improved when a limiting factor is discovered and overcome.

33. Winter feeding of game is an uneconomical and ineffective practice with more disadvantages or harmful results than benefits. Winter feeding of song birds increases opportunities for nature study but has little or no effect on populations.

34. Wildlife disease is present everywhere but increases as populations increase. Populations are not primarily reduced by disease; disease increases and becomes harmful with high populations.

35. High wildlife populations are precarious and always followed by reductions.

36. The number of prey animals determines the number of predators; predators rarely control prey. Game populations fluctuate with predation as a secondary cause. The progression is from (1) range depletion, (2) disease, to (3) predation.

37. Game population oscillations, erroneously called cycles, occur in northern U. S. in 3-4 or 9-10 year intervals.

38. Hunting can exterminate a species that reaches a specific low level.

39. Ducks were more plentiful earlier; other game more plentiful now.

40. The main objectives of federal waterfowl regulations are: (1) to preserve the resource, and (2) to distribute the allowable kill as equitably as possible.

41. Migration is the major difference between waterfowl and upland game management; unlike for upland game, harvest is a significant mortality factor for waterfowl.

42. The relative size of the permissible harvest can and does vary with the quality of the range or habitat.

43. The compensation principle states that if one mortality factor does not get animals in a population, something else will. Nature takes what the hunter does not take.

44. Diminishing returns in hunting prevents the shooting-out of grouse and related populations. Hunting is self-regulatory.

45. For small game, season length is of little consequence in protecting or changing populations.

46. Daily bag limits, more than season length, help distribute the kill among hunters.

47. Quail can be safely harvested to 1/2 the fall population.

48. Hunting, in the absence of other checks, is a reasonable method for population control.

49. Where adequate cover exists, small game populations cannot be over-harvested by normal hunting.

50. Deer populations have negative effects on rabbit, grouse, and turkey habitat and population.

51. Animals are selective of foods. All plants are not "food." Food quality varies with: (1) species, (2) palatability, (3) nutrition, (4) availability, (5) variety, (6) digestibility, (7) animal need, and (8) past habits of the animals.

52. Deer management over most of the county is largely a matter of taking a sufficient harvest to protect the food supply.

53. Introducing species may work; the probabilities are low; the costs high; and the cost-benefit ratios very questionable.

54. Returns from stocking are directly and positively related to the quality of the range, not to demands of sportsmen.

55. Game management practices should be evaluated by the cost required to produce extra shooting (over that which would have occurred without management).

56. Pheasant stocking, like trout stocking, is less costly and more effective when large numbers of birds (or fish) are turned out on limited areas that are heavily hunted (fished).

57. Game farms cannot support public hunting. They now support some hunting at high relative costs.

58. Effects of predators must be judged in connection with (1) numbers of predators and prey, (2) prevalence of disease, (3) available food, (4) competing species, and (5) amount and quality of escape cover.

59. Predator control can reduce losses; whether costs justify it or whether more game is ultimately produced is questionable.

60. Predator control is practical as a temporary, quick protection of breeding stock on adequate range from which a game animal has been nearly or wholly eliminated.

61. Attempts to use predator control yearly seem to be universally unsound. In healthy wildlife habitats, wildlife populations take care of themselves.

62. Predator control for wildlife management is unsound but control for livestock protection purposes may be sound.

63. Bounties do not accomplish their purpose.

64. Wildlife management (called by Giles faunal resource system management) will improve when the results of decisions can be reliably predicted.

65. Failures in wildlife research have been largely due to intuitive approaches, faltering efforts, and poor research design. Adequate control over experimental conditions cannot be gained to do classical science on wild populations and their habitats.

66. Wildlife management is insufficient because of incompatibilities in studies and the knowledge base, management action, user behaviors, and legislation.

67. Wildlife is most properly managed when the people create an agency, enterprise, and system for (1) gathering technical data or technical questions, and (2) using this information to formulate and to administer regulations, (3) to manage areas dynamically, adapting to changes in objectives as well as responses of populations and faunal space. (Whether enterprises rather than a government agency may be best for the future needs to be explored.)

68. Bounties, artificial stocking, and importating exotics are typical amateur management practices.

69. Legislator appointment of game agents or commissioners has been disastrous to the faunal resources.

70. Faunal resource politics will become desirable when the things people ask for and demand from their representatives are largely for someone else.

A preliminary paper on what are the principles of any course is available as well as further work on the objectives of a principles course.

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This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision January 17, 2000.