Wildlife management
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Wildlife management can be a process for seeking to keep certain wildlife populations at desireable levels determined by wildlife managers. Many times these management practices are implimented by a governmental agency to uphold a law, such as the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Wildlife management under the ESA is supposed to use the best available science to balance the needs of wildlife with the needs of people. Wildlife management is interdisciplinary, integrating science, politics, mathematics, imagination, and logic. It deals with protecting endangered and threatened species and subspecies, and their habitats.
Wildlife management takes into consideration ecological principles such as carrying capacity of the habitat, as determined by the science of ecology. This science of wildlife management is disputed by some groups, such as animal welfare supporters saying that the killing of foxes merely serves to draw larger numbers of foxes into an area. Most wildlife management is concerned with the preservation and control of habitat, but other techniques such as reforestation, re-introduction of species or hunting may also be used to help manage key species. In a modern era, there is no such thing as a "natural" habitat, and habitat is preserved for the benefit of the owner of the land. In some cases, this benefit may mean killing other birds and animals in order to maintain a high population of a more profitable species, such as pheasants introduced into woodland.
Aldo Leopold, one of the pioneers of wildlife management, defined it as "the art of making land produce sustained annual crops of wildlife." The process involves managing human impacts on land, with the desired result being sustainable, balanced populations of various species. Wildlife management ultimately depends on habitat management.
If a habitat is to be maintained it must include natural disturbances that are normally present, such as wildfire and grazing by wild animals. Fire suppression can damage the ecosystem, since fire is a natural phenomenon that is required for many ecological processes, such as the clearing of dead plant materials and the germination of some types of plant seeds. For this reason, controlled burns are implemented in areas where wildfire is suppressed. Each successional stage present in the wild habitat must be maintained, from the first pioneer species to the full array resident in the climax community.
One of the first steps in wildlife management is to preserve the keystone resources in the habitat, which include sources of food, water, and protection. Some examples of keystone resources include water sources, nest boxes for cavity-nesting birds, and salt licks to provide minerals to animals.
There are two general types of wildlife management:
- Manipulative management acts on a population, either changing its numbers by direct means or influencing numbers by the indirect means of altering food supply, habitat, density of predators, or prevalence of disease. This is appropriate when a population is to be harvested, or when it slides to an unacceptably low density or increases to an unacceptably high level. Such densities are inevitably the subjective view of the land owner, and may be disputed by animal welfare interests.
- Custodial management is preventive or protective. The aim is to minimize external influences on the population and its habitat. It is appropriate in a national park where one of the stated goals is to protect ecological processes. It is also appropriate for conservation of a threatened species where the threat is of external origin rather than being intrinsic to the system.
See also
Resources
- Bolen, Eric G., Robinson, William. (2002). Wildlife Ecology and Management. 5th Edition, Prentice Hall.
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