Rural System's

Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management

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Preface

See Introduction and "Extra Notes"

After 50 years of wildlife work I have realized that there are many kinds of wildlife management. There's a single society, its three journals, but there are many definitions of what it is or ought to be, many agencies, and many philosophies. In the 1990's there came an era of re-entrenchment and a glimpse of "faunal system management." People began realizing that "the environment "was too large to encompass an specializations arose. Funds were cut, federal services reduces in the US, concepts of private systems emerged, non-game funds became available; Threatened and Endangered Species funds and their staffs continued, conservation biology became competitive, the public expanded its involvement, and new activity arose among the anti-hunting and anti-trapping people and their groups. At the same time, deer and other wild animals, now abundant, were seen as pests. It was a decade of great change, but that is what Adam said to Eve.

Some professors (such as I) spend a lot of time on definitions (perhaps too much). In a field in which there are few concrete entities and some doubt about whether that thing is a mouse or vole, or that is a plant or an animal, it is reasonable, at least makes discussions efficient, if definitions are agreed..

I no longer include "science and art" in defining faunal resource management, which is making decisions and taking actions to change the structure, dynamics, and relations of wild faunal populations, faunal space, and people to achieve specific human objectives cost effectively by means of the animal resource. This definition is at a distance from others in use. 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.

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 presumptuous as to embrace all of forestry and its giant 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 habitat-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.

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 course and my web site www.LastingForests.com. 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 at hand 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), and potential human benefits unfulfilled in many others.

I wrote a textbook on Wildlife Management published in 1978. The publisher 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 and felt guilty, but reviewers said it was too advanced. My work on the Wildlife Society's Techniques Manual showed me the uncritical nature of members and users of the manual. Both books, as well as my "principles" text translated into Chinese (as most books), were far out of date 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. The Basic programs were out of date in the "Windows"world.

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 needed for getting out the word about the complexity of ideas and concepts essential for modern, sophisticated faunal resource management. Getting out such word 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 my latter-day students. 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 and its materials are 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 a textbook now available on the web for students, 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 just 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 (not replacement) within the presently active alternatives. That's my hope.

All of the materials in this course have been developed by me. I offer them in all seriousness. None are presented to stir controversy or to play the devil's advocate. Of course there will be disagreement and errors and illogical and erroneous thought discovered. I hope all of these will be corrected soon.

I have consistently found that I learn when I teach. I also suspect that I know only what I can write. I've written unit herein 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, but so also is ecology, perhaps moreso. 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".
• 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 mental 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 populations denies any claims that this is an ecological profession. Nevertheless, the field must reasonable limits. Plants as the primary resource of interest and activity must be left to others.
• 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 for only 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 for the average professional. 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 and minimum and costs are high because that is the ground for many salaries and wages.

By analogy I perceive this course is just "the tip of the iceberg" of a total positive natural resource system . Employees, the faunal system managers must divert the path of these 300,000,000-ton icebergs away from the rigs by towing them with ships! Similar towing may be our job together.an actual picture by a Rig Manager for Global Marine Drilling in St. Johns, Newfoundland.

There are few things in active wildlife resource management that follow clear patterns or hierarchies. Importance of factors change with seasons; dominance of topics changes with research results; the roles of people change with their education,creativity, risk-taking ...and their acceptance by their boss. The hypertext is perfect for the complexities of the resource management world but people still want and seem to need a two-dimensional list of "what do we need to know?" Studies suggest that most students learn best when they have a course outline. I shall provide that. Superior students will overcome the effects of the simplification provided by an outline, but we need to get a firm grounding and then we can deal with the peculiar relations, the contradictions, the topics held ... unanswered and unresolved.

All managers of public lands, whether foresters, range managers, fisheries scientists, urban planners, or outdoor recreation specialists, increasingly deal with the problems of the influence of their decisions or actions on the wildlife resource. Preventing economic loss to forests or farms, preventing species extinction, increasing game, and maintaining ecological balances are goals sought by land managers, public and private. A breadth of natural-resource awareness and expertise is considered to be desirable by employers and educators. An ability for other resource managers to communicate effectively with wildlife management experts is considered essential. Perhaps this course can provide the overview and advancement for wildlife majors and others, as well as an introduction to the language, tenets, assumptions, and methods for studying, manipulating, and administering the faunal resource.

Needs for revisions, clarifications, rewriting, increased precision, alternative phrasing...abound and I continue in this work. I do not have the time or energy for any more than you see ... almost daily changes sent to you via the Internet. This is a personal web site 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.

Contents

    You may click or link to the Contents of the Course or to the Assignments, the two major places (or files) out of which we work.

Fairly recent textbooks on wildlife management and ecology may be of interest.

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Last revision January 18, 2004.