On rainy days at Peculiar Manor the fire burns tall. The warmth pulls thoughts from me like it does moisture from my thick socks propped against a billet near the fire. All morning I have moved large limestone rocks from my roadside pile down to the streambanks to slow the erosion there. I am cold. As I lift each rock I look for the copperhead snake. I prefer to work on cool days when the snakes will be sluggish. Each rock has a good or bad shape or size. I search for the right ones - those that will fit my bank-shoring-up task. By the fire, it seems to me that rolling rubble is like looking at wildlife management. I cannot tell whether wildlife management is the stone with the perfect fit, or waste rock - too ponderous to move or later to become scrap for filling around the cracks. My thoughts usually turn to wildlife management and what it is or could be.

Out there, somewhere, there is a "thing" with all the accouterments of a profession - a society, certification, a journal, conferences, schools. It is called wildlife management. It cannot define wildlife ("game?" of course; fish too?, salamanders? Is including insects going too far?; wildflowers?). Weaknesses in definitions hardly challenge the scrutiny of a sophomore class on logical fallacy. Failures to deal effectively with these topics, judged to be trivial academic debates by some, are at the root of failures in struggling with curricula, accreditation, conference planning, agency structure, and how precious limited funds are allocated at both the state and federal level and within foundations and private organizations.

A major part of the unsettled business is a social dimension to wildlife management. [There is no controversy, only tabled business. The parties are tired, unaware, very polite, or have read "resource conservation" as "conservative in all matters."] Human Dimensions in Wildlife Newsletter has emerged with a new group. There are a few reported studies in wildlife law enforcement, and several modern hunter attitude studies have been conducted. There have always been hunter surveys (how long did you hunt, what did you get, and how much did you spend?) but these were rarely integrated. They were someone's job and an agency only used the results at budget justification time and during legislative hearings.

There is emerging a serious, scholarly, scientific, professional approach to the human side of the wildlife resource at a time when funds for traditional wildlife programs are being lost.

An issue is: should the study of and objective efforts at manipulating the values, knowledge, and behavior of people be a part of wildlife management? If it is, then that Italicized statement is rarely included within the definition of biology. The issue is not clear, like one of whether to oppose a dam or promote a bill. The dimensions of the issue are:

1. Every wildlife conference for over 60 years has spoken of the needs to educate and to work with people.
2. By some definitions, a resource only exists in a human context, i.e., for or with people, and must potentially provide human benefits. [How else are benefits established? From whom? By what?]
3. Most state wildlife agencies have so-called information and education groups, usually pledged to conservation education.
4. Several administrators have claimed that wildlife management is 90% people management, 10% wildlife management, suggesting both the problems of magnitude and definition.
5. Over 30% of state wildlife agencies funds go to wildlife law enforcement groups. There is almost no research to back up the cost-effectiveness of using these funds and their produced effects on the wild fauna resource.
6. One Australian reviewer of my 1978 textbook, Wildlife Management (Freeman Co.), seemed surprised to see the inclusion of the human dimension.
7. There are very few courses taught in wildlife schools about managing groups and their dynamics, expediting political processes, effectively communicating and teaching, or using extension or information transfer. Only a few schools have courses in wildlife law enforcement, and those that do, emphasize forensics, evidence, and court procedure, not crime prevention or the relations of enforcement to other aspects of resource gains.
8. Most information and education groups are reduced by the agency financial rule, "offend no one," to teaching about the proper size of holes for bird houses rather than waging the hot wars that persist over trapping, widespread pesticide use, vertebrate pest damage control, threatened species, human population expansion, and profound loss in habitats of favored species.
9. Among most wildlife schools, a serious scholar would be hard-pressed to discriminate between programs alleged to be "wildlife biology" and those alleged to be Wildlife management" (or wildlife conservation). Within the universities, where there are some role models, people continue to put on blinders and say, "I only study wildlife physiology." While there are clear benefits to specialization, small academic programs in "wildlife" (e.g., botany, toxicology, statistics) make it very easy for 3 or 4 specialists, given the enormous sweep of wildlife management, to bear no significant relationship to the field. Their students, unavoidably, are biased, and they populate the profession.

In general, it is very difficult to see why a study of ticks on wild animals should be done in a wildlife program rather than in an entomology department, a biology department, a medical school, or a veterinary school. The "orientation" of a wildlife program is given as the reason; perhaps control to increase wildlife is the asserted connection.

My definition, which students chant (under pressure), is:

Wildlife management is making decisions and taking actions to manipulate the structure, dynamics, and relations of wild animal populations, faunal spaces, and people to achieve specific human benefits by means of the wildlife resource.

Thus, just any study of ticks by a wildlife group is inappropriate under this definition (as well as for other reasons.) The optimization of a large, complex system is the topic, not ticks, or plants, or any one thing, but the total system. The wildlifer who includes the human dimension will consider, for example, as one alternative, education to use regularly an effective repellent against ticks. Such use could be much more cost-effective over the long-run than wide-spread use of an acaricide, habitat destruction or modification, vaccinations, or many other alternatives related to manipulating the vector population, the host population, or their habitats.

In fact, one alternative in the social corner of the population - habitat - people triangle is to modify people's behavior. Keep them out of the tick-infested area during a monitored period from time A to B when disease can be contracted. Unpleasant? Yes, but it is likely that the other alternatives are too. The wildlife manager's question is: Optimum benefits at what level of cost or unpleasantness? 10. Nowhere can a plan be found for a long-term, phased, educational program for a specific animal population that addresses methods and programs for changing human values simultaneously with the predictable changes in game and animals.

I know from one study, for example, that human values for wildlife resource benefits change with the average age of a human population (e.g., desire for abundant meat vs. trophy). "Good" ecology - producing abundant flesh for harvest - may be "bad" resource management unless it produces the benefits desired or demanded at some point in time (no matter what the benefit to cost ratio).

It is difficult to be meaningfully critical of a field without being specific and thus incurring the wrath of an individual. (No, I am not opposed to research on ticks by people employed within wildlife management.) The needs for critical scrutiny of wildlife management activity remain. There are thousands of people studying the biology of semi-domesticated and non-domesticated environments - plants, soil, streams, fauna. Because they study wild things, that does not necessarily make them a part of wildlife management. There are expert hunters, educated and experienced, but being informed users does not necessarily make them a part of wildlife management. There are brilliant naturalists and high school teachers whose students sense the workings of ecosystems. That does not necessarily make them a part of wildlife management.

A question for the entire natural resource community is one of whether wildlife management is a forming science, one uniquely devoted to (1) decision-making, and (2) integrating the triumvirate of wild animal populations, animal spaces, and (3) people. Perhaps it is not and only a banner under which all students and advocates of things wild will assemble for their own reasons. The answer to whether peoples' values, demands, and perceptions of risk about wildlife populations are topics of research, publication, and specific actions will determine the future pathway taken.

I believe that one day a new rigorous, holistic view of wildlife management will emerge. The group of practitioners is nowhere close to that now, for they are largely biologic - game animals and habitats. When a view that is faunal (as well as game), of the total ecosystem, and inclusive of people, then the rudiments will be in place. Then (or simultaneously) will be included the power of the decision sciences, optimizations. Until this occurs, wildlife management will be a tattered umbrella under which all interests huddle for a namesake. That will not hasten the day of the effective management of the wildlife resources.

Neither will "conservation biology," a new sect from the old church. Only recently emerging, a group of people with non-game and threatened/endangered species interests and a research bent went after limited funds. A Trojan horse, they entered the field and were welcomed with open acclaim. They have been successful, assisted by a growing public disinterest in hunting (improperly called anti-hunting). There is vast disinterest, little "anti"-attitude. The group took its name loosely from the first issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management and have ridden the appeal of author Aldo Leopold. The non-name group, rarely or poorly defined, uses a professionally discredited word "conservation." They then join "biology," even though they may strongly support and promote ecology. This identity-less group gains members, publishes a journal, advocates courses - even whole curricula. It speaks of diversity as an objective, leans to landscape ecology, and talks of genetics more than management. Perhaps a competitor was needed to shake up the field of wildlife management. Greater effectiveness could have been gained by an alternative strategy. There are now two whole organizational structures, journals, and conferences. Stabilizing jobs and the organizations will become more important than working directly with the resource. The research is now further removed than ever from the decisions in the field. The techniques of conservation biology are old wine in new bottles. It is hard to kill an organization, so both will persist. No new budgetary resources and a new forager for funds only means fluctuating, sub-standard support for work to be done by everyone involved. Neither will "give in" to the other. Perhaps the idea that perfect competitors cannot co-exist is a rule from nature. In the organizational world, competitors will wax and wane. Perhaps they will stimulate solutions. That is a hope, the same one that existed when there was one organization. Other professional fields (e.g., medicine, law) have several service groups. The wildlife or ecology field is neither large enough, strong enough, rich enough, or free of responsibility in crises to allow such effective development. My view (1996) is that a third group will emerge to outdo and take over from the two starving, struggling, weak groups.