I move away for the phrase "wildlife management" as rapidly as possible because I do not manage wildlife (whatever the meaning of that word) but I mange the resource. I am, and I believe others should be, involved in wildlife resource management. The phrase is too common. It is too lightly skimmed-over. The differences between the two words and the three words seems trivial; hardly worth noting. I believe the difference is at the root of past problems and, if not corrected, the sandy foundation for future work.

A resource is a fundamental concept of economics and has four or five interactive components. I visualize a resource as a tetrahedron, the volume of interactions. First in the list is energy or matter and transformations back and forth. The typical resource includes "stuff", the physical reality such as coal, timber, and animals. These may readily be transformed from physical to energy forms. A resource may be a service as in "goods and services" of classical economics. An idea may be a resource. Neither a good nor service, it can be viewed as a nascent form of energy, like gasoline, ready to explode or do work.

A resource has the dimension of time. A good or service must exist at the appropriate time. It must be available "when the time is right". A winning proposal for extensive wildlife research, if not delivered to the contracting office on time, is not an agency resource. Animal food present but not available when needed is not a resource. The manager must work interactively with the energy and matter of the resource situation but also with time. The office must be built on time, the funds for salaries must be available on time; the tractor must be repaired when the seeding needs to be done, the mowing must be done at the right time to assure control of certain weeds. The essence of ecological succession or transitions is the nature of changes in things with time. Sufficient time must pass before certain desired (or undesirable) states are reached.

An elk on a remote mountain that can never be reached and that is off limits to hunting is not a resource to a hunter. Expending funds on such animals for hunters is unlikely to be rational. A seam of coal many miles under ground, while clearly known, is not a resource. It is valueless; it costs more to reach and extract it than anyone knows how (or can imagine affording). It is in a space that prevents it from being a resource. Birds within a military high-security area and unlikely to be a resource. Large trees on steep slopes across the river are probably not lumber resources. They are in the wrong space. Food close to a trail is a resource for big game; food out of reach "unavailable" is not a resource. The manager must manage animals but also the things that collectively define them as resources, otherwise they merely do big-animal biology or something else which they can name or define any way that they wish.

The fourth component or resource dimension is variety. Some people call this diversity, but that word has more problems than wildlife management so I use variety for teaching and general conversation about this important dimension. Timeliness contributes to the importance of a resource. So too does where it is (space) and its form. How varied is energy or matter or the space it occupies (perhaps "landscape ecology" studies and describes spaces) may contribute to the naming and importance of a resource. Rarity is clearly important. The converse is also true for birds; the more abundant the species, the more rich the area, and it is easy to hear talk about the "richness of the avifaunal resource in area XXX." After days of bird watching, seeing more birds may not be as fascinating as the count on the first day. Variety tends to be expressive of enhanced resource values, but for some things, "enough is enough." The manager typically works with variety in plant foods to assure a stable, long-term production of food for a species, a timely, well-located, varied resource for the resource being managed to produce benefits for people.

The alternative wildlife resource management concentrates on manipulating and controlling simultaneously for people the four vertices of the resource tetrahedron...matter or energy, time, space, and variety.

A resource...

matter or energy, time, space, and variety
matter or energy, time, space, and variety
matter or energy, time, space, and variety.

Review:

A resource is an economic concept. It is a physical entity that may produce human benefits. It has the characteristics of energy (or matter; transferable), time, space, and variety.

Each resource is dynamic, changing in relation to these 4 components. All resources such as forests, water, and minerals have the same 4 elements or components.

If economics is the study of and activities related to the allocation of scarce resources (all of them) then wildlife management is a subset of economics. Finance is a subset of economics. It is related only to money, not to all concepts of value of goods and services in time and place.

Wildlife that cannot be reached has no benefits (or certainly very few) to humans (The existence value argument). This relates, in part, to the space component defining a resource.

Resources have variety: Having eaten a half gallon of vanilla ice cream, there is little interest in another half-gallon of the same ... but maybe another flavor.

A resource, by definition, is related to benefits. In modern wildlife work, few people realize that benefits are non-linearly related to population size (more is not always better.)

Assignment

1. Write a definition of a resource.
2. Name the major elements of any resource.(list them) (For yourself,(do not send it to me) sketch a tetrahedron and label the 4 corners as a way to help you remember and visualize the relationships of the 4 elements.)
3. Discuss why an osprey nest deep within a refuge or an cougar population on a far mountain are not likely to be a resource. Under what conditions may they be resources?