After 50 years of wildlife work, I have realized that there are many kinds of wildlife management. There's a single society. It has three journals, but there are many definitions of what it is or ought to be, many agencies, and many philosophies. In the early 2000's there came an era of re-trenchment and a glimpse of "faunal resource system management." People began realizing that "the environment "was too large to encompass and specializations arose. Funds were cut, federal services were reduced in the US, concepts of private systems emerged, non-game funds became available; Threatened and Endangered funds and their staffs continued, "conservation biology" became competitive with "wildlife management," the public expanded some of its involvement,dropped others, and new activity arose among the anti-hunting and anti-trapping people and their groups. At the same time, deer and some other wild animals, now abundant, became seen as pests. It was a decade of great change, but that is what Adam said to Eve.

There are "sects" that have grown within the community; splinter groups; revolutionaries-in-waiting; unaffiliated expert amateurs; and droves of dropouts. There are soil, water, fisheries, and forestry specialists that have greater expertise in wildlife topics than the people within agencies classified as wildlife people. I recently attended a short course and heard material presented that was 30 years old, un-revised. All of these observations and views have led me to present an alternative view of wildlife resource management. It is not the only view. It is my view with all of my biases. There being almost no forum for discussions of alternatives, and no means for resolving conflicting viewpoints within the group of people who variously call themselves " wildlifers" is one reason why I have developed this site. The field is too important to allow its dissolution and entropy into a meaningless morass of loose talk and conflicting philosophy, theory, educational units, structure, organization, and execution. My view is that such a stage is close and that there is need for work to clarify and explicate theory, resist invasions as needed, secure meaningful feedback, and move into the fast-changing world where the resource is threatened in one direction, denied in another (pests and disease vectors), garbled at the urban fringe, and potential human benefits unfulfilled in another.

I considered calling this course the Essential Practices rather than principles, but that would suggest a techniques course and what to do with field equipment. Nevertheless, it is a course about what I see as the need and what I suggest students to do. Together, these are the recommended practices, the thinking, designing, creating, decision making ... and, oh yes, the actual changes that are made in population abundance, in land use, in plans, and in group settings and decisions made.

I wrote a textbook on Wildlife Management published in 1978. The publisher (Freeman Co.) required that I reduce my original manuscript by two-thirds and make it suitable for undergraduate students. I felt that the necessary matter was in the entire manuscript. I relinquished, felt guilty, but reviewers said it was too advanced. My editing of the Wildlife Society's Techniques Manual (1971) showed me the uncritical nature of members and users of the manual. Both books, as well as my "principles" text translated into Chinese , were far out of date (as are most books) before they hit the sale rack. My Forest Faunal Systems text received mixed reviews, publishers couldn't see a large market, and costs of publishing a large text do not balance well with high prices for students in relatively small courses.

Bob Giles and M. Leon Powell, Wildlife Society Chapter Meeting, 1998

The membership of the Wildlife Society (about 8000) does not suggest a bunch of readers/scholars so getting out the complexity of ideas and concepts essential for modern, sophisticated faunal resource system management is not easy...probably not possible. I could not succeed in communicating its content and complexity to students over 35 years. There were successes but they were shallow. The students changed. The words of the forest, farm, field, and hunting and fishing were foreign to them. They now came from cities. Most had no field experience (except holiday camping and TV fantasy). Their attention span diminished. People read about 4 times faster than they listen to words. The lectures could not handle the subject matter. The texts were few, limited, and pricey. The modest work of students to get a good grade on a course in high school morphed into college. There, students absorbed the notion that everyone was equal... which became all ideas are equal, and then that everyone should "have an opinion"...no matter what the source, how well researched, how logical, or how well supported by hard, diligent study and synthesis. No one mentioned responsibility for opinions, statement, decisions, or actions.

I've read and thought about and participated in agency-based wildlife resource management for over 35 years. This course is an effort to get together the experiences, insights, and theories and to express it as briefly as I can. Forest Faunal Systems has seemed too long for some reviewers; "forests" too narrow in scope for others. It is now available on the web for both of these type people, for free, because I think it can be good for the faunal resources of the world. I have clearly in my mind an alternative to agency wildlife management (as practiced by the employees of state and federal resource agencies). It is an alternative. Perhaps when contrasted and compared to other alternatives, those may be seen more clearly and sharply, and perhaps another equal or more viable and effective alternative may be seen. Perhaps that alternative, an evolutionary step, will serve people well for the future. It can serve, at least, in promoting some changes (if not replacement) within the presently active alternatives. That's my hope.

I have consistently found that I learn when I teach. I also suspect that I know only what I can write. I've written Essentials to find out what I have learned and know. There are other reasons, some personal, some professional. These two are intermixed because my personal life has been largely committed to studies and teaching in wildlife management. Because the two are so intertwined, it is difficult to separate the personal element which is (or probably should be) irrelevant to others. The professional reasons include:

• Those in the field and those entering it have to see this as predominantly a decision making profession. The powerful decision making tools and procedures (e.g., statistics, logic, and game theory, expert systems, optimization, artificial intelligence) need to be used.
• Love of animals and the great outdoors, a good start, are not sufficient for a career.
• Biology is important; ecology too. These are inadequate knowledge bases for wildlife management. They must include, grossly, the 5 E's: ecology, economics, esthetics, energetics, and enforcement. It is meaningless, so imprecise as to bring ridicule, to assert that this field is "applied ecology". It is so much more than "biologically oriented."
• Plants in wild places need to be part of the topics of concern to the wildlife manager. Botany is minimized in many curricula teaching wildlife management. "Plant grains for the animals" may be a slogan, but for many species the slogan should be and may include "manage the aquatic foodbase for the animals." Not to actively manage fish and related aquatic populations denies any claims that this is an ecological profession.
• The proper scope for management is the region and the large development project. Data systems are essential. Synthesized data chunks, knowledge must be used to influence decisions having large impact. I have personally seen the equivalent of a professional career in developing wildlife habitat turned to net nothingness by one decision about a dam, another about 20 miles of an interstate highway, another about a high-voltage powerline right-of-way, another about a dozen general aviation airports. Knowing about the life stages of a salamander is unlikely to turn the decision.
• It is easy to forget that many animals migrate, even short distances. Management must include two places for many animals. Managers like to think that they are in control of their populations but they are only for a brief period. Someone else has them for part of the year (or breeding cycle). Not merely cooperation but international work together is essential.
• Early appreciation for the beauty of animals turns inward. Early zeal to save endangered forms retreats into scientific objectivity. It is as if the amateurs are in control, the "environmentalists" with the many connotations which that word now has and the uncertainty now attached to pleas for concerns. There seems no one concerned, no one of authority speaking to the decision maker. Expressions of immediate peril are negated by study plans and requests for budgets for 5-year studies! The actions do not match well with performance.
• Wildlife management can be fun, even therapeutic, perhaps metaphysical, but none of these is an appropriate reason why the public should pay people to be wildlife resource managers. The resource benefits are modest and costs are high, because that is the ground for many salaries and wages.
• Without a definition or singular concept of what wildlife management is, then any one can gain employment as one...and a peculiar mix has done so. When this happens, schools cannot stabilize enrollments; investments in scholarly units cannot be justified; the people of the courts have no criteria for judgements; incessant internal debate builds hours (and "bills"hours) in the office, few in the field. Variety in concept and approach can be good, especially when interposed to a stayed group, but noise can result.
• This is a personal effort to communicate to an individual at a computer screen, me to you, and not "the party line" from me or to who I think you are. I am hopeful that the material herein will suggest to some people that they should not seek employment within wildlife management. For others it will suggest a field that they never understood, that has so many needs and demands that they may never be fulfilled. It is a field that has many different requirements that can be matched by people with special personal interests and abilities. At age 70 (in 2003) I wish I could start again knowing what I know now. The latter is what I'm trying to share with you.

This unit is a hypertext. It, itself, is brief, but it is linked to many other resources. The readers/users will move forward, backwards, and sideways within and among files and units as they advance an idea, check references, seek other supporting materials, or pause for reflection and writing. Writing ideas, taking notes, and actively involving the mind in writing summary statements (not just several-word notes) is essential work. Using Forest Faunal Systems is an option.