Figure 5.1. Wildlife places are of variable size and operate under very different rules, laws, and policies influencing use and benefits.

There is no wonder the public is confused by the variety of terms used around the world for special wildlife places - refuges, parks, preserves, and sanctuaries. These include a sequence that can be seen along two axes in Figure 5.1 There are areas with almost no use, nearly complete protection and with no management, emphasizing the natural situation, and whatever changes that occur are assumed to be for the overall good. At the other extreme are intensively used and managed areas. There are few at either extreme. Some areas are simply set aside. Lines are drawn on a map. A law is passed. The area exists! At the other extreme, surprisingly not highly influenced by size, are those areas in public management where use rates are high, but activities to protect animal populations and to produce a harvestable number are also high. As use rates of an area dedicated to wildlife increase, the intensity of use must decrease. There are only so many users that can get on an area ... get through a gate.

The needs are for knowledge about such capacities. I prefer to think of a user influencing a small piece of an area, everything in it. The piece is a hexagon selected because they are like circles (suggesting a user's "sphere of influence" or zone). These zones, if circles, either overlap or have interstitial spaces, so I reject both and select the most similar geometric form that "packs." It is the hexagon of the honeycomb. If all users are equally distributed and all have the same average area of impact (a), then the number of users in the entire area can be estimated by:

U = A/a

There are edges and boundary problems (the context, but there always are) and there are similar edge problems if circles are used as the space of the user.

Figure 5.2. When circles are used to select the area of influences of people or animals (as in upper right), overlap (1) or unaccounted space (2) results. By using a hexagon with distance to corner (r1) or side (r2) estimated, improved estimates of space are likely.

I'm convinced, as was Buckminster Fuller, that the world is triangulated, not square or circular, and that triangles (or six of them in the hexagon), and all manner of tetrahedrons associated with them in three dimensions will prove to improve our field estimates. (We've just selected the wrong image of how the world is structured. It is tetrahedronal, not squarish or cubical.)

A circle has an equation of

a = 3.1416 r².

A hexagon having a radius drawn to its vertices has an area of

a₁ = 2.5981 r₁².

When the smaller hexagon is used (the radius to the midpoint of the line, i.e., the inscribed circle) the relation is:

a₂ = 3.4641 r₂².

The estimate of r for a circle or hexagon is crucial and can have profound effect, because it is squared and then a, of whatever size, gets divided into the total area (an estimate if there was one, as any realistic geographer or surveyor will confess). See Figure 5.2.

U, shown above, is a gross index but it suggests an order of magnitude of users, future potentials, and raises questions for the manager to seek ways to influence either A or a. The equation is the manager's tool. It lays out the options. For example, if a could be decreased by education habitat, permits, etc., what would be the effect on U?

Where does the manager get values for a? One way is to ask users (e.g., How far did you walk? How wide an area did you see or use? The product of the two answers is an estimate of an area.) Hunters and trappers will often show an area that they have worked on a map. There are maximum distances that can be traveled per hour; maximum viewscapes. Maximum densities can be found from other public places, such as sports complexes. A minimum is one person on an area, but there are surely minimum counts or estimates available for almost any area. A straight line projection may be suggestive, but it probably levels off, reflecting the slow-down with capacity phenomena in many systems.

There are areas where only a few valuable animals exist. Often the causes for there being only a few animals are high levels of use and disturbance. It makes sense to protect areas and their animals by closing out some use. Such set-asides may be the only action taken and may thereby harm the species (as when over-grazing occurs), rather than provide the beginning of a total recovery or stabilization program.

Areas are placed in a boundary under a variety of legal protections to protect animals while migrating, feeding, and nesting. Some areas protect large and spectacular populations, others protect those threatened with extinction. Some are parks, which are often preserved for scenic beauty; wildlife are a concern, but usually secondary.

There is a simplistic notion that "preserves are good," but it needs to mature to the concept that for certain animals, in certain areas, for certain human objectives, areas need to be designated for a variety of levels of protection. All areas need some form of management and supervision. Deciding on what is the needed form and the exact amount is a major topic of modern wildlife resource system management.

I am glad for preserves that have been created and I hate to be critical of any. I hasten to add, however, that there are criteria for "good" areas and that an optimum may be decided. It may be too late and that optimum area, even though decided upon, may no longer be available. Then relative goodness must be decided. In some cases, if an area will not achieve the intended objectives, it should be set aside.

Because this chapter is about places, the connotations are about area. I view natural resource "areas" as having at least four dimensions. (My students have taught me I must not try to describe the n-dimensions, the hypervolume, in which the manager really lives and works). The simple four dimensions are the two common ones of area, then the third one of volume ... from the air in which birds fly to the depths that hold minerals and oil that influence wild animal and plant populations throughout the volume. The fourth dimension is time, and without elaboration, it an be used to close out use, open seasons, encourage right-time use, ... not just the physical volume, but the temporal volume is the 4-D world of average managers.

Because species, areas, and people create unique situations, I think general laws for all such areas should not be used. Provisions need to be made for sensitive, timely, professional management schemes. For example, one area will exclude hunting, one allow supervised taking of only one life group, another prevent people visiting only during a 2-month period when animals are breeding. Excessive regulation usually prevents optimum management. It is constraining; allows only sub-optimum performance because once disturbance is controlled, then use and associated benefits are at the center of resource area management. By analogy, within health systems, prescriptions are needed, not banning sale of substances because they may be misused.