Wildlife management

"Wildlife management triad" according to Decker et al. (2001) Human Dimensions of Wildlife Management.[1]

Wildlife management is the management process influencing interactions among and between wildlife, its habitats and people to achieve predefined impacts.[2][3][4][5] It attempts to balance the needs of wildlife with the needs of people using the best available science. Wildlife management can include wildlife conservation, gamekeeping and pest control. Wildlife management draws on disciplines such as mathematics, chemistry, biology, ecology, climatology and geography to gain the best results.[6]

Wildlife management aims to halt the loss in the Earth's biodiversity,[7][8] by taking into consideration ecological principles such as carrying capacity, disturbance and succession, and environmental conditions such as physical geography, pedology and hydrology.[9][10][11][12] Most wildlife biologists are concerned with the conservation and improvement of habitats; although rewilding is increasingly being undertaken.[13] Techniques can include reforestation, pest control, nitrification and denitrification, irrigation, coppicing and hedge laying.

Gamekeeping is the management or control of wildlife for the well-being of game and may include the killing of other animals which share the same niche or predators to maintain a high population of more profitable species, such as pheasants introduced into woodland. In his 1933 book Game Management, Aldo Leopold, one of the Western pioneers of wildlife management as a science, defined it as "the art of making land produce sustained annual crops of wild game for recreational use".[14]

Pest control is the control of real or perceived pests and can be used for the benefit of wildlife, farmers, gamekeepers or human safety. In the United States, wildlife management practices are often implemented by a governmental agency to uphold a law, such as the Endangered Species Act.

In the United Kingdom, wildlife management is undertaken by several organizations including government bodies such as the Forestry Commission, Charities such as the RSPB and The Wildlife Trusts and privately hired gamekeepers and contractors. Legislation has also been passed to protect wildlife such as the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The UK government also give farmers subsidies through the Countryside Stewardship Scheme to improve the conservation value of their farms.

  1. ^ Decker, Daniel J.; Riley, Shawn J. (Shawn James); Siemer, William F. (2012). Human dimensions of wildlife management (2nd ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-4214-0654-1. OCLC 778244877.
  2. ^ Decker, Daniel J.; Riley, Shawn J. (Shawn James); Siemer, William F. (2012). Human dimensions of wildlife management (2nd ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 248. ISBN 978-1-4214-0654-1. OCLC 778244877. We then defined wildlife management as follows: The guidance of decision-making processes and implementation of practices to influence interactions among people, and between people, wildlife and wildlife habitats, to achieve impacts valued by stakeholders.
  3. ^ Bolen, Eric G.; Robinson, William L. (2003). Wildlife ecology and management (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-13-066250-7. OCLC 49558956. We therefore suggest that wildlife management is the application of ecological knowledge to populations of vertebrate animals and their plant and animal associates in a manner that strikes a balance between the needs of those populations and the needs of people.
  4. ^ Sinclair, Anthony R. E.; Fryxell, John M.; Caughley, Graeme (2006). Wildlife ecology, conservation, and management (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-4051-0737-2. OCLC 58526307. 'Wildlife management' may be defined for present purposes as 'the management of wildlife populations in the context of the ecosystem.'
  5. ^ Raj, A. J.; Lal, S. B. (2013). Forestry Principles and Applications. Jodhpur: Scientific Publishers (India). p. 359. ISBN 978-93-8623774-3. OCLC 972943172. Wildlife management is the manipulation of wild plant and animal species behaviour or abundance for a specified goal.
  6. ^ Potter, Dale R.; Kathryn M. Sharpe; John C. Hendee (1973). Human Behavior Aspects Of Fish And Wildlife Conservation - An Annotated Bibliography (PDF). U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. p. 290.
  7. ^ M. E. Soulé and B. A. Wilcox. 1980. Conservation Biology: An Evolutionary-Ecological Perspective. Sinauer Associates. Sunderland, Massachusetts.
  8. ^ M. E. Soule. (1986). What is conservation Biology? BioScience, 35(11): 727-734 [1] Archived 2019-04-12 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ Soule, Michael E. (1986). Conservation Biology: The Science of Scarcity and Diversity. Sinauer Associates. p. 584. ISBN 9780878937950.
  10. ^ Hunter, M. L. (1996). Fundamentals of Conservation Biology. Blackwell Science Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts., ISBN 0-86542-371-7.
  11. ^ Groom, M.J., Meffe, G.K. and Carroll, C.R. (2006) Principles of Conservation Biology (3rd ed.). Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA. ISBN 0-87893-518-5
  12. ^ van Dyke, Fred (2008). Conservation Biology: Foundations, Concepts, Applications, 2nd ed. Springer Verlag. p. 478. ISBN 978-1-4020-6890-4.
  13. ^ Torres, Aurora; Fernández, Néstor; zu Ermgassen, Sophus; Helmer, Wouter; Revilla, Eloy; Saavedra, Deli; Perino, Andrea; Mimet, Anne; Rey-Benayas, José M.; Selva, Nuria; Schepers, Frans (2018-12-05). "Measuring rewilding progress". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 373 (1761): 20170433. doi:10.1098/rstb.2017.0433. PMC 6231071. PMID 30348877.
  14. ^ Leopold, Aldo (1996). Game management. ISBN 81-85019-54-1. OCLC 971482354.