Rural System's

Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management
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Cross Current: Injury vs. Damage

Kill the pests! Stop the damage! Use integrated pest management, IPM! Manage the pests!

Perhaps we need to manage the damage.

One way is to change the population density. There are many other ways to manage damage other than killing or removing animals. We may not have to manage (in some "integrated" way the pest(s), only the value, the effects, etc.

Injury is physical change or at least the perception of it. Examples: A beaver chews the base of an apple tree; a bat flies through a bakery, potentially contaminating the products there with hair, feces, or urine.

Damage is injury but with value attached. Whether the beaver caused the tree to produce fewer apples, whether it shortened its useful life, whether it destroyed its esthetic quality -- these determine whether the tree was damaged.

There are many ways to reduce or stabilize damage. Reducing an animal population is only one way.

See concepts for the future of damage management.

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Last revision January 15, 2004.