Rural System's

Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management

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The Fundamentals or Major Concepts of Wild Faunal Resource System Management

Definition of Wild Faunal Resource System Management:

Wild faunal resource system management means making decisions and taking actions for changing the structure, dynamics, and relations of wild animal populations, faunal space, and human populations to achieve specific human objectives by means of the wild animal resource.

Fundamentals:

The foundation statements, some from very diverse fields of knowledge, that provide a minimum basement structure or foundation upon which and between which advanced concepts of ecology, economics, esthetics, and enforcement and administration may be formed. These are believed to be the minimum premises and concepts needed by the wildlife resource manager but are not the principles of wildlife resource management.

1. Wildlife population density, variety, and size of individuals are directly and positively related to high soil fertility.
2. Health of parent animals (birds) directly influences egg production, fertility, and hatchability or survival of the young.
3. Most high quality soils are used for purposes other than wildlife production, thus, for example, where firming is intensive, wildlife production is usually low.
4. On agricultural lands, game production must usually take a low priority; that is, treated as a by-product. In recent years, they have emerged as a joint product, in some cases producing more income than conventional crops.
5. The normal life expectancy of most small game animals is less than a year; 2-3 years for big game. Life expectancy is less than longevity.
6. Wildlife managers deal with and are more interested in populations than isolated individual animals.
7. A population decline is rarely due to animal losses, only failure of a population to expand as normal.
8. Populations grow to fill all available environments.
9. Abundant wildlife losses occur in nature and are natural and expected.
10. Losses in any population in relatively natural conditions are relatively constant, no matter what the combination of causes.
11. Small animals have higher death rates than larger animals, also higher birthrates.
12. A high "standard of living " for game animals can exist only in an under stocked environment.
13. One population does not drive another out, but populations change in response to changing environments and to each other.
14. Each species has a survival margin, some greater than others do. Those with a narrow margin must be managed carefully. The greater the population turnover rate, the wider the margin. (Most small game populations have a wide margin; the whooping crane,for example, a narrow one and a slow turnover rate.).
15. A task of the wildlife manager is to discover what are the best conditions for each species on each area, and then learn how to adjust the number of animals to this limit and to other conditions.
16. Total efforts of wildlife managers must be directed toward producing human benefits or preventing losses through increasing, stabilizing, or decreasing wildlife populations...but especially the potential net benefits available from them.
17. Benefits can be increased without changing the population, as through managing human demand and expectations as well as the faunal space.
18. Managers seeking to increase native populations must manipulate environmental factors so that a managed population can increase to its fullest.
19. All lands in their natural condition have a strict and measurable capacity to support animals.
20. "Carrying capacity " refers to a land unit (like a volume of water) measured in animal units (like gallons). It is the optimum number of quality animals of a particular species that at any stated time can survive in a given wildlife habitat, without impairing the habitat for a long time for future populations.
21. Increasing carrying capacity involves bringing the essentials for animal well being and survival as close together as possible.
22. As a population approaches carrying capacity, its productivity or mortality rate decreases.
23. After habitat conditions are no longer limiting, social (density-stress) factors may become active.
24. Many "surplus " animals are produced each year, well above carrying capacity. These animals die or will readily fill abandoned territories.
25. In general, it seems that game production per female increases on hunted areas.
26. Weight (faunal mass) of animals (game and fish) is a better measure of carrying capacity than number of animals; an area will support many small animals or a few large ones.
27. Habitat means "home " or where animals live. In modern use, habitat or faunal space means all of the factors that "surround " a population year-around including food, cover, climate, all of the abiotic factors, and even other animals (e.g., in dens or herds) of the same or different species. Time is one of the factors.
28. Plants and many animal species are found in recognizable communities. These communities change or follow orderly sequences of events, usually readily approximated, called succession or community transition.
29. Many animals limit their lives to one or a few communities.
30. To provide special communities for animals, succession or change of such communities must be changed (set back or advanced). Cow, plow, fire, axe, flooding, drainage, and herbicides are primary ways of setting back succession. Secondary ways, though of equal or greater importance are taxes, local economics, allotments, industrial activity, etc. Feeding non-native foods and providing nest boxes provide the conditions of advanced succession.
31. Not only the presence or absence of vital elements of the habitat are important but also the arrangement or pattern of these elements.
32. Creating corners, edge volumes, and proper arrangement of plant communities increases both the number and variety of species in an area.
33. Wildlife conditions are easily improved when a limiting factor is discovered and used (either to increase, stabilize, or decrease a population.
34. Winter-feeding of game is an uneconomical and ineffective practice with more disadvantages or harmful results than benefits. Winter-feeding of songbirds increases opportunities for nature study but has little or no effect on populations.
35. Wildlife disease is present everywhere but increases as populations increase. Populations are not primarily reduced by disease; disease increases and becomes harmful with high populations.
36. High wildlife populations are precarious and followed by reductions.
37. The number of prey animals determines the number of predators; predators rarely control prey. Game populations fluctuate with predation as a secondary cause. The progression is from (1) range depletion, (2) disease, to (3) predation.
38. Game population oscillations, erroneously called cycles, occur in northern U.S. in 3-4 or 9-10 year intervals.
39. Hunting can exterminate a species that reaches a specific low level.
40. Low abundance of waterfowl has been of long-standing concern.
41. The main objectives of federal waterfowl regulations are (1) to preserve the resource, and (2) to distribute the allowable kill as equitably as possible.
42. Migration is the major difference between waterfowl and "upland game " management; unlike for upland game, harvest is a significant mortality factor for waterfowl.
43. The relative size of the permissible harvest can and does vary with the quality of the range or habitat.
44. The compensation principle: if one thing doesn't get animals, something else will. Nature takes what the hunter does not take.
45. Diminishing returns in legal hunting prevents the shooting-out of grouse and related so-called small game populations. Hunting (not shooting or other removal procedures) tends to be self-regulatory.
46. For small game, season length is of little consequence in protecting or changing populations.
47. Daily bag limits, more than season length, help distribute the kill among hunters.
48. Quail can be safely harvested to 1/2 the fall population.
49. Hunting, in the absence of other checks, is a reasonable method for population control.
50. Where adequate cover exists, small game populations cannot be over-harvested by normal hunting.
51. Deer populations have negative effects on rabbit, grouse, and turkey habitat and population.
52. Animals are selective of foods. All plants are not "food. " Food quality varies with (1) species, (2) palatability, (3) nutrition, (4) availability, (5) variety, (6) digestibility, (7) animal need, and (8) past habits of the animals (including learned behaviors from parents or elsewhere).
53. Deer management over most of the county is largely a matter of taking a sufficient harvest to protect the food supply.
54. Species may be introduced; the probabilities for achieving permanent minimum viable populations in the area are low; the costs are high; and the cost-benefit ratios usually very questionable.
55. Returns from stocking animals are directly and positively related to the quality of the range, not to demands of hunters or other resource users.
56. Management practices should be evaluated by the cost required to produce "shooting. "
57. Pheasant stocking like trout stocking is less costly and more effective when large numbers of birds (or fish) are turned out on limited areas that are heavily hunted (fished).
58. Game farms cannot support public hunting. They now support some hunting at high relative costs.
59. Effects of predators must be judged in connection with (1) numbers of predators and prey, (2) prevalence of disease, (3) available food, (4) competing species, (5) amount and quality of escape cover, and demand for or cost of the loss of prey.
60. Predator control can reduce losses; whether costs justify it or whether more game is ultimately produced is species-, area-, and demand-specific.
61. Predator control is practical as a temporary, quick protection of breeding stock on adequate range from which a game animal (or other animal of importance) has been nearly or wholly eliminated.
62. Attempts to use predator control yearly seem to be universally unsound. In healthy wildlife habitats, wildlife populations take care of themselves.
63. Predator control for achieving naturalistic wild animal population numbers is unsound, but control for livestock protection and intensive efforts to achieve the number of wild animals to meet demand it may be sound.
64. Bounties do not accomplish their purpose.
65. Wildlife management will become a science when the results of decisions can be reliably predicted.
66. Failures in wildlife research have been largely due to intuitive approaches, faltering efforts, and inadequate funding tied to poor research design.
67. Wildlife management is often insufficient because of incompatibilities in research, management, and legislation.
68. Wildlife is most properly managed when citizens or clients create an agency and/or system for: (1) gathering technical data or technical questions, (2) using this information to formulate and to administer regulations, and (3) actively managing land, the faunal space, and peoples' demands, expectations, values, and willingness to substitute wildlife-related experiences.
69. Establishing a bounty, artificial stocking, and importing exotics are typical amateur management practices.
70. Legislator appointment of game agents or commissioners usually has harmful results to the resource.
71. Game politics or biopolitics will become desirable when the things people ask for and demand from their representatives are largely for someone else.
72. Nature is full of compensating factors (e.g., low reproduction of fish in one year may allow more food and higher reproduction among those remaining). To double the food available for deer, for example, reduce the population by one-half.
73. We must use marginal values, not average values. The cost of the next needed animal produced by the manager purposely become the criterion for decision making.
74. Hunting economic values or benefits are not proportional the the take (the harvest).

A preliminary paper on what are the Principles to be included as the subject matter of any wildlife management (or later faunal resource system management) course is available as well as further work on the objectives of a principles course.

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Last revision January 15, 2004.