Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management
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Wildlife management is an unknown field of work and study. In 50 years, I have never met anyone who knew "what I did" when I answered that question. Hunters are a mere 10 percent of the population and even they do not know. It is an arena of work in which even the paid participants do not agree on a definition ...if they can voice options. The field struggles with self definition, split by agency splits between fish and "other things" as by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Biologists deny their education for they realize plants are also wild "life" but rarely included within books about or university courses treating wildlife management. Universities split wildlife "biology" and wildlife "management" as if there are clear distinctions. In forestry programs in universities "forest management" is one course in a large program of study. "Wildlife management " is a course, easily assumed to be parallel and equivalent to "forest management" but the field is as large or larger than forestry and fully as large and diverse as "fisheries", a topic for which there are entire university colleges devoted. Uncertainty of name has not been the cause for a competitive discipline to arise within universities. That odd amalgam, also without clear definition, is "conservation biology", attesting to be broader than wildlife management (although adopting "biology" and not "ecology " or something more broad and tacking on "conservation" a word debated since before the early thirties.
Wildlife management was once called "the science and art of..." but it is not. It is simply a set of actions. It means making decisions and taking actions to manipulate the structure, dynamics and relations of wild faunal populations, faunal space, and human groups to achieve specific human objectives by means of the wild faunal resource. It might use science; it might even be "grounded in" science; it might appear artistic. It includes things not scientific and things not artistic or unique creative expressions of rare managers. Its evidence is required and that can only be in estimates of pre-stated, desired change in human benefits related to wild animal benefits.
I too omit wild plants as a resource to be actively managed as a resource producer within this field.. I hate to do so. The field is overly large, impossible to master even if restricted to wild fauna. Plants are manipulated by wildlife managers but the objective of doing so is animal benefits, not producing direct human benefits from plants and their products. That work is already assumed for the large wild plants (by the foresters), the wild grassy and shrub plants (by the range managers and agronomists), and the others by small groups dealing with wild wetland, desert, and special communities relating to endangered species of wild plants. Some botanists actively manage plant populations and communities ... just because. The person desirous of being the ecologist (alleged to work with the whole system) probably cannot be one because of the social structures of university structures, societies, and agencies competing for memberships, class sizes, research funds, alumni support, name recognition, mortgage funds, and entry into employment classes.
If I know that I am undertaking an action that will certainly fail, I judge my action to be irrational. I come from a place that begs for, encourages, rationality. If I see medical doctors and public health specialists taking more than eight years to master a single organism, the human, then I have evidence of the work needed to master a communicating, very domestic organism. Similar time is evident to master a single breed of livestock. As the old wildlife manager I drew my list of 20 species of large mammals and birds. I now have a list of 900 and wonder when the next will be added. I've seen the large list of Indian birds, African reptiles, and dare not even ask for the local list of butterflies. If serious, I would define the field as responsible for the management of 3,000 species (and be embarrassed by the omissions). There are too many. There is not one expert per species! It is irrational to believe and perpetrate the fiction that all wild animals, their ecological associations, and their distinctive human benefits are the subjects of wildlife management. Sooner or later there must be" truth in marketing"; the definition must match the profession and the practice.
Imagine a courtroom dialog:
Q: So you're a wildlife manager and you claim to be an applied ecologist. What is an ecologist?
A: A person who studies the relations among plants and animals and their environment.
Q: All plants and animals? How many large animals must you study in a typical East-Coast, US area?
A: About 1000.
Q: Ignoring all major relations such as predation and various positive and negative symbioses, how many possible single relations are there to study among those 1000 species?
A: Well, N = n(n-1) so there must be 999,000 nameable, "one-arrow" possible relations (common in sketches along with descriptions of ecosystems) among these species.
Q: And, ecologist, ignoring the 50 or more nameable categories for analyses within each of these one-arrow relations, how many of these have you actively studied within your career?
Insignificant wells up as "a few" is divided by 999,000. The witness in the courtroom of everyday affairs is dismissed.
I walked into a store and said "I want a half pound of that ham, thinly sliced." It occurred to me that I would have liked to point at wildlife management and say that "I wanted two well-done projects." In the store I was pointing, limiting, generally quantifying, specifying a type of process, and I was assuming classical price correctness, cleanliness, courtesy, and packaging. By analogy, wildlife resource management is not physical, like ham. It is not discovered but decided. It (wildlife) is defined and assumptions are made about general understanding of "resource" and "management". The probability of a clear understanding of the three-word phrase (given 0.8 odds for each word) is only 0.51 (i.e., 0.8 x 0.8 x 0.8). I despair that the general public will ever comprehend the meaning of the phrase. Seemingly qualified students after several repetitions of the meaning cannot consistently demonstrate mastery of the concepts behind the phrase.
I no longer try to define an ecosystem. I rarely use the term, avoiding conflict. "Manage that pond!" I say, pointing. Discuss if you will the size, shape, wetted area, the trees at the edge, the tree shadows on the water, the evaporative differences in units of the pond, the sources of water intake, and the winds sending rain clouds ... but manage that pond! Of course everything is related to everything. What a quaint insight. Discuss biomes and Glogger's rule and ... but manage that stand of trees! Manage the rabbits in those three fields! Increase that bird population! The effect of such statements is to adopt a practical closed-system view of management. I believe it is proper. It is practical. It needs to be tentative. Martin Buber, I think in a related way, once discussed the theological notion of a "holy insecurity."
| Tentative, practical closed-system management |
I was taught by many respected sources to thing "study of ..." when in encountered "... ology." Wildlife biology seems limiting to me for it, being important, is only about study. "Ecology" although widely and improperly used in the press and elsewhere, still summons from me notions of study. "Wildlife management ", admittedly having to study and use studies, is a topic of control, of regulated change, of action to achieve a stated objective. But even these two words are erroneous. The modern wildlife manager does not want (necessarily) to manage animal populations but to change the benefits potentially derived from them. Animals as seen by the wildlife manager are a resource. Resources, distilled from many easily-forgotten introductory university classes, are "the total means or assets available (typically grouped as goods or services and including facilities, labor, and armaments and raw material) for economic, political, and other development for increasing production, profit, or well-being." A resource is a fundamental economic concept. It is a physical entity or a service that may produce human benefits. Each resource is dynamic, changing in the major dimensions of
All resources -forests, water, wildlife, or minerals - have the same four elements. They are means to human ends. (Protectionists may claim management for animals ends, but there are no discernable criteria for success if this is the basis for work, and rarely will there be convincing evidence for differences in multi-species projects even if the ends are in question. Protectionists must address the ends of proper management actions in the face of zoonoses, food loss, and high property value loss from wild animals.)
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Last revision September 7, 2002.