WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

In some sense, wildlife management is not new. Wildlife was managed for subsistence hunting—by burning fields to create grass for ungulates, for example—by early humans and even perhaps by protohumans. Game management—management of animals for sport hunting, in particular—has been traced at least as far back as ancient Egyptian civilizations. Large game fields, managed for sport, were maintained for the recreation of Egyptian royalty. Hunting restrictions—which can be thought of as the precursors of modern wildlife management—can be traced back to early tribal customs and taboos. Typically game management involved few species—mostly for food and sport, but also for aesthetics in some cases—and was practiced over relatively small areas in a decentralized manner.

Since the twentieth century, due mainly to a confluence of developments in ecology and society, game management has been supplemented by more comprehensive wildlife management in most developed countries. Game management programs often dominate government wildlife management departments because of their political popularity and because they have, in hunting and fishing license fees, a strong source of revenue. Beginning in the 1920s with the pioneering work of Aldo Leopold, wildlife management took its place next to game programs. Eventually many governments reconceptualized game management as one specialization in the broader field of wildlife management, and in the early-twenty-first century most governments include agencies that accept some responsibility for maintaining healthy populations of almost all indigenous species.

Leopold and Evolution of Wildlife Management in the United States

Leopold, working with his more field-oriented friend, Herbert Stoddard, provided both the intellectual and practical leadership in shifting government agencies, at least in the United States, toward a more holistic approach toward wildlife management. As a consultant and researcher on game populations in the early 1930s, Leopold met and became friends with the British ecologist Charles Elton, an advocate of the empirical study of whole ecosystems. Elton and Leopold both recognized the implication of ecology: It is very difficult to manage single species in isolation without upsetting important ecological processes over time. This insight was driven home to Leopold by the abnormal fluctuations in deer populations in the southwestern United States, where he was director of operations, and sometimes game manager, over national forest holdings. Leopold had employed predator eradication as a means to create an artificially large herd of deer for hunting. During an especially bad winter, more than 60 percent of the deer died because they had eaten all available browse, causing a population crash, destroying vegetation, and encouraging soil erosion. In areas where top predators have been removed and there are no natural checks on wildlife population increases, there are often disagreements about the ethical treatment of animals, including conflict with private hunters and with government management agencies over policies involving culling of wildlife populations. Reducing populations of species whose natural predators have been eliminated is a great challenge. Agencies charged with controlling wildlife populations are sometimes strongly criticized by the public, which has become increasingly concerned with animal welfare and animal rights (Dizard 1999, Sharpe et al. 2001).

Leopold, years later in his classic book of essays A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (1949), included a brief but elegant mea culpa. He said he had mismanaged the land, creating starving deer and eroding hillsides, because he had not yet learned "to think like a mountain" (Leopold 1949, p. 130). Leopold treated his conversion as a revelation and also as a metaphor that must guide the future of wildlife management. Haunted by the "fierce green fire" that he saw in the eye of a dying she-wolf—a wolf shot by his group of forest rangers—Leopold realized, he said, that "there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and the mountain" (Leopold 1949, p. 131). Leopold gradually rejected predator eradication programs and eventually advocated protection of wolves in wilderness areas. He devoted his remaining career to advocating and practicing holistic wildlife management, applying ecological principles to whole ecosystems. He was learning to think on the timescale significant to mountains—and was accepting moral responsibility for the long-term results of his short-term thinking about wolves and deer.

After leaving the U.S. Forest Service in 1928, Leopold became, first, a private consultant on game and sport hunting, and eventually the first professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin. He concluded that predators were an essential element in a healthy ecosystem, and shifted emphasis in his managerial theory and practice toward more holistic habitat management and away from management for single species (Leopold 1939, Flader 1994). By the late 1960s and early 1970s, some states had initiated nongame wildlife programs, and since then wildlife programs have flourished in response to strong public support and coexist, more or less easily, with game management programs. Demographic changes also had an impact as more of the population moved to the suburbs and the exurbs. These changes corresponded with an increase in leisure time and an increased demand for opportunities to interact with wildlife in nonconsumptive ways, for example during popular activities such as hiking, camping, and bird-watching. By appealing to this growing interest, governmental and nongovernmental agencies built a political constituency that supported parks, reserves, and wilderness. (Hays 1987).

Leopold, following Henry David Thoreau and John Muir—other holists who were very influential in conservation—thus shifted the focus of management from species to systems, and departed from his resource management approach. He moved toward a biotic view, which sets out to protect the integrity of ecological systems.

Leopold's evolution began with his belief that the goal of management is to maximize game availability; by the time he published his landmark book, Game Management in 1933, Leopold had also begun to emphasize the quality of game, arguing that quality is inversely related to artificiality. He advocated minimizing interference in the hunter/prey relationship to the greatest extent possible. Leopold believed sportsmanship was enhanced—and moral and aesthetic values supported— when the sportsman interacts directly with wild game, without the interference of wildlife managers. Leopold realized, however, that growth and dispersion of human populations increases the need for more invasive management. Thus he saw game management as a negotiation between demand for quantity of game for increasing populations and the continuing threat to the quality of game and the hunting/fishing experience.

Leopold also argued that the same methods that he and others had applied to game management should be employed to maximize wildlife more generally, and closed the 1933 book by arguing that managers should apply similar methods to all wildlife. He stated that the goal of wildlife management was "to retain for the average citizen the opportunity to see, admire and enjoy, and to challenge to understand, the varied forms of birds and mammals indigenous to his state" (Leopold 1933, p. 403). Leopold advocated use of agricultural tools to produce more wildlife, claiming that the goals of the profession were not just to keep all life forms in existence, but also to ensure "that the greatest possible variety of them exist in each community" (Leopold 1986, p. 403).

By 1939 Leopold had become less optimistic regarding the possibility of managing for particular species, recognizing that ecological relationships are so complex that manipulation of systems to maximize some species will always have unforeseen consequences; species are so intertwined that only habitats can be protected. Leopold advocated protection of whole habitats and argued that society should value whole communities of plants and animals, and stop trying to value and favor some species inordinately. Leopold continued, until his death in 1949, to advocate holistic management, and registered many successes in protecting natural areas. He recognized, however, that truly holistic management remained mostly a dream. His influence, nevertheless, continues, as many wildlife managers follow Leopold's principles and emulate his method of integrating ecological science and management.

Issues in the Twenty-first Century

Since Leopold's time, and especially since the 1980s, concern with wildlife management has been supplemented with attempts to save biological diversity, which is a very broad and complex concept that includes wildlife. In the United States, biodiversity policy has been shaped by the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which restricts activities that threaten species of concern, and also mandates species and habitat restoration for species that are listed because of risk of extinction or extirpation from regional habitats. Although the act is politically controversial, protection of species remains a high priority for large majorities of the public. The act has also been criticized for retaining a bias toward single-species management, and there have been many efforts to reshape wildlife management to protect ecosystems and habitats. In this broader effort, endangered species protection is an important element, and the act, with its emphasis on single species management, nevertheless protects many species and their habitats through its designation and protection of critical habitats for listed species, which are of course shared with other plants and animals.

One important ethical controversy arises over the treatment of wild animals in captivity. While zoos have since late in the twentieth century shifted their message from purely recreational enjoyment of animals toward a conservation emphasis, animal rights organizations attack zoos as animal prisons, and question the holding of wild animals in captivity as a way to supplement or shore up sagging wild populations. Critics of invasive management of specimen animals ask: What gives humans—who have already disrupted animal communities all over the world—the right to capture and hold animals for conservation breeding purposes? (Norton et al. 1995)

Since 1970, as wildlife management and biodiversity protection policies have become more scientific by incorporating ecology and many other physical and social sciences into the management process, several important consensuses regarding both goals and methods have emerged. One important consensus is that large parks and preserves are necessary, but usually not sufficient, to protect all varieties of wildlife, because even large parks often lose significant numbers of mammal species (Newmark 1995). Accordingly there is increasing interest in managing the matrix of private lands that embeds reserves. This may involve creating buffer zones of lighter use around reserves, and creation of protected riparian corridors to connect various reserves and populations of animals (Harris 1984).

Gap analysis has emerged as the state of the art method for protecting biological diversity. According to this technique, ecosystem and habitat conservation programs are judged by comparing biodiversity priorities with existing and proposed reserves. By identifying gaps—important ecological communities that have no protection—conservation efforts can be concentrated on saving all community types and, in the process, the species of wildlife that depend upon them (Church et al. 1996, Scott and Csuti 1996). The goal of international conservation is to protect representative samples of all the biological communities in the world (McNeely 1989). Efforts are underway to restore some whole ecological systems and to reintroduce predators in some areas, such as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the western United States. Restoration of wildlife populations and protection of their habitat is praised not only for its ecological benefits, but also as a means to involve communities in local conservation projects, thereby building community leadership and making citizens more aware of environmental values.

The future of wildlife management—and of wildlife itself—in the early twenty-first century is uncertain. As cities expand into countryside, it becomes more difficult to maintain populations of many species, especially large predators. Scientific experts fear that species such as wolves, mountain lions, and bears will become increasingly hard to protect. As areas not dominated by human uses shrink, wildlife will have to be managed more invasively to protect the diverse biological heritage each generation has inherited. Such management, however, undermines the wildness of wildlife and affects, as Leopold stressed, the quality of the human experience of wild creatures.

Learning to protect truly wild populations will be a challenge for the future. Rapidly accelerating rates of extinction demonstrate that humans have not learned these protection methods yet. As the pressures of expanding populations and cities continue though the twenty-first century, much wildlife will be lost as ubiquitous species that easily cohabit with humans take over the remaining, fragmented habitats. Only a concerted effort to understand and to act decisively can avoid a drastic simplification of the biological context in which humans evolved. Such an effort would involve unprecedented cooperation among scientists, governments, private land-owners, and wildlife management agencies, and could only achieve success if techniques are developed to manage whole regions to maintain adequate reserves and other protections to form a complex matrix of human and natural communities.

BRYAN G. NORTON

SEE ALSO Environment;Environmental Ethics;Management;Wilderness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Church, Richard L.; David M. Stoms; and Frank W. Davis. (1996). "Reserve Selection as a Maximal Covering Location Problem." Biological Conservation 76: 105–112. A review of scientific approaches to reserve design.

Dizard, Jan. E. (1999). Going Wild: Hunting, Animal Rights, and the Contested Meaning of Nature. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. A thoughtful discussion of the problems of managing wild populations in close proximity to human communities.

Elton, Charles. (1927). Animal Ecology. New York, NY: Macmillan. Elton led the way toward a more systems-approach to studying animal species.

Elton, Charles. (1958). The Ecology of Invasions of Plants and Animals. New York, NY: John Wiley. The classic ecological treatment of migrations of plants and animals.

Flader, Susan L. (1994) Thinking Like a Mountain: Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of an Ecological Attitude toward Deer, Wolves and Forests. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Originally published in 1974. A detailed study of Leopold's changing views on wolf management.

Harris, Larry. (1984). The Fragmented Forest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. An analysis of the causes and remedies of habitat fragmentation.

Hays, Samuel. (1987). Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. A historical look at evolving goals of environmental management.

Leopold, Aldo. (1939). "A Biotic View of Land." Journal of Forestry 37: 113–116. A brief essay that marked a key milestone in Leopold's evolution toward holistic management.

Leopold, Aldo. (1949). A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leopold's much-read and much-loved reminiscences of a life in conservation science.

Leopold, Aldo. (1986). Game Management. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Leopold's classic (1933) "textbook" of management science.

McNeely, Jeffrey A. (1989). "Protected Areas and Human Ecology: How National Parks Can Contribute to Sustaining Societies of the Twenty-first Century." In Conservation for the Twenty-First Century, ed. David Western and Mary Pearl. New York: Oxford University Press.

Newmark, William D. (1995). "Extinction of Animal Populations in Western North American National Parks." Conservation Biology 9: 512–527. An important scientific paper often cited to show the limitations of reserves in the protection of all species.

Norton, Bryan G.; Michael Hutchins; Elizabeth Stevens; and Terry Maple, eds. (1995). Ethics on the Ark: Zoos, Animal Welfare, and Wildlife Conservation. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. An anthology of differing viewpoints on zoos and their role in conservation.

Scott, J. Michael, and Blair Csuti. (1996). "Gap Analysis for Biodiversity Survey and Maintenance." In Biodiversity II: Understanding and Protecting Our Biological Resources, ed. Marjorie L. Reaka-Kudla, Don E. Wilson, and Edward O. Wilson. Washington, DC: John Henry Press. A summary of the goals and techniques of gap analysis.

Sharpe, Virginia A.; Bryan Norton; and Strachan Donnelly. (2001). Wolves and Human Communities: Biology, Politics, and Ethics. Washington, DC: Island Press. An anthology of viewpoints on the possible re-introduction of wolves to upstate New York.

Thoreau, Henry David. (1960). Walden. New York: New American Library. Thoreau was a pioneer in seeing wildlife as a key to living a better life. Walden was first published in 1854.

Thoreau, Henry David. (1998). "Walking." In The Great New Wilderness Debate, ed. J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Essay originally published in 1862.