Forest Faunal Systems

In the final moments of the name change of the old Bureau of Biological Survey, a Commissioner, interested in assuring fisheries budgets amended the law to create the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Most people conceive of "fish" as "wildlife" although the public has been confused by the name of Service. Game has been used synonymously with wildlife for years with gross neglect of research and management of other forms. Plants are life and most are wild. They too are to be managed, not merely as the environment of animals but as the objectives of a system. Typical work is with threatened "wild flowers" but all types of semi-domesticated or wild plants are within the realm of wildlife management as I now view it. It is as reasonable to change a deer or mouse population to save a wild plant as to change a plant community to enhance conditions for an animal population. I am aware that trees are also wild plants and that a strict interpretation of the definition would include most of the activities called "forestry." I include all forestry activities and concepts that enable managers to achieve their objectives. The attempt being made is one of developing an appropriately encompassing definition in an area where territory has already been partially staked out, where overlaps are needed, but where agency, academic, and personal identity still seems needed. A totally acceptable definition is now no longer possible.

email interest fluorished in late August, 1999, resulting in the following suggestion:

At the Forefront of Conservation:
The History of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
in Conserving our Nation's Resources
http://www.nctc.fws.gov/history/

Within this book I have not discussed the management of wild floral systems. The reason was political; there is not tradition (circa 1990) of including wild plant management as part of wildlife management. (Some schools have no botany requirement!) A war to include flora could not be won. It can be and needs to be fought. The definition here has been so criticized and widely rejected that I surrender in face of such criticism and skepticism and suggest that large undomesticated or semi-domesticated animals are the currently acceptable populations of interest. Thus, many readers will view the fauna of interest more narrowly than I, and each will have to decide his or her own meaning for "wildlife" as it is used, partially only for brevity and variety in contrast to "fauna" or "wild flora and fauna" elsewhere in the text.