A unit of Lasting Forests Sustained forests; sustained profits evolving since March 30, 1999

I no longer include "science and art" in defining faunal resource management, which is making decisions and taking actions to manipulate the structure, dynamics, and relations of wild faunal population, faunal space, and human objectives and behavior. This definition is at a distance from others in use.

I avoid using "wildlife" for it is meaningless relative to "fish"; non-game is a non-word, a negative footing for a field that needs all of the positives it can get. All fauna are potentially subject to management; many are. Wild life probably should include plants but rarely does and people in the field cannot be so presumptious as to embrace all of forestry and its plants. Faunal space is reflective of the multidimensional hypervolume -- the total environment of a population inclusive of the yet-undisciplined "landscape ecology", everything usually included in habitat studies (cf: food and cover), and even animals as environment, e.g., the caribou at the center of a herd are within a very important habitata space rarely included in habitat studies.

Human dimensions aspects of the definition appear as human objectives and behavior. Much of the work on attitudes, appreciation, goals, values, demand, risk, substitutability, expectations, and cultural standards is included within objectives. Behavior includes all types of behavior from hunting, to obeying game laws, to voting, to feeding songbirds and includes large-action categories such as feedback, feedforward, and developing information systems.

In the Wildlife Techniques Manual of 1969, I ventured a definition and have been refining it ever since. I can hardly believe how different it and the one above are. I still think it is very important to try to be precise in our language. It gives us a solid basis for developing theory, defining (and defending) the territory of a field for budgetary and other resource-related reasons, and building a cohesive field of knowledge and action.

This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision January 17, 2000.