Words are models. They represent the world and thoughts. Words are images of things real or imagined. They may represent form or function. Most people strive for as true representation as possible, at least as is necessary or sufficient. To describe something is to model it. When people know the words of a field, they have the representations needed to understand what is being said, to capture things observed in simple form so that others can be told, and things likely to be seen or experienced can also be communicated. Words, as all models are limited. Using the wrong words or modeling poorly or too simplistically can capture an idea ... but it may be the wrong idea or only a limited version of an idea.

Words can be used to name a category in which knowledge may be stored or related. A danger is that once something has been named, there may emerge the erroneous belief that the topic has been mastered. A complex phenomenon observed in ecology may be observed consistently and there is an apparent need to tell someone about it. It is named but is still under study. Others hearing the name and recognizing the similarity of the observation with theirs may believe that they too are as expert on the topic as the person naming it and continuing study. The word may be by design temporary, a may be on the way to becomming A. The professional ranks and the ranks of the naturalists and people interested in the environment are full of people who know the words but do not know the language.

I once learned of the metaphor of the priest, one with the knowledge to handle the sacred things. I am not making a point about the quality or importance of words, only that there may be a parallel, at least a similarity, between the average person who can handle the hardware of the church but not handle it in a priestly manner and the average person who can do the talk but not handle the words with the propriety, nuances, and precision of the well-educated and continuing-to-learn natural resource manager.

In working with creating a glossary (a collection of words often used within a text or within a limited field) it became evident to me that a very large percentage of college and university lectures and text assignments are directed at learning the language, mastering the words.

It may be appropriate to consider how words can be learned rapidly, then the study can progress of how they arose, can be used, made more precise, and used together in creative efforts to understand the wild faunal resource and how it may be managed within the context of other resources to produce human benefits.

A long and useful glossary is now available to the students of the Essentials. "Reading the dictionary" has never been viewed as time spent in pleasure, but when it comes to mastering the wildlife resource for the world of the future, pleasure hardly seems like a criterion for what must be done. You are encourage to see the glossary and to master at least 3 words a day. In a 200 day work-year, you will not cover the entire glossary. There is a career ahead.