Rural System's

Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management

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Characteristics of an Important Alternative

Combine the following with the Final List.

This is a web unit about alternative "wildlife managements." Not really, for that would require intensive comparisons and I see no reason to elaborate on aspects of alternatives that have little or no merit. It is a statement of an alternative, the best that I can formulate after 50 years of working in the field and committing my life-thought to it. Biased, a polemic (or other invective), at least this unit present one position as clearly as possible so that other alternatives may be compared to it.

The elements of the alternative will be brought out within each unit of this site but some of the keys ones are...

• You use a systems approach
• You attempt to model and optimize total systems
• Use the 5 E's of ecology, energetics, economics, esthetics, and enforcement
• Use computers to enhance decision making
• Use expert system concepts
• You're developing and using dynamic planning systems
• You're exploring enterprise-based work
• Seek alternative means of knowledge-base building
• You're encouraging developing dynamic geographic (and related) information systems and using results
• You're using non-linear concepts
• You're giving attention to simple rules (artificial intelligence)
• You have to know who you've been, who you are, and who or what you are becoming.
• You've got to know who you want to become.
• Management means being in control, actively shaping and making a significant difference in a desired structure of and direction in a system.
• You manage the resource, not just the animals.
• Resources have 4 interactive dimensions: energy or matter, time, space and variety.
• "You manage the resource" means to consistently produce perceived benefits to people at reasonable or acceptable costs.
• You have to simultaneously work among and balance populations, faunal space, and people (their behavior as well as their expectations and perceived gains).
• Protection and preservation are one aspect of management, a system constraint.
• The resource benefits come from the wild faunal resource enterprise, the whole thing.
• There are many ways to the same end state. Defining the desired endstate, selecting the techniques, and estimating the costs of getting there are the managerial tasks.
• There are no principles, except this one.

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Last revision January 19, 2004.