Wildlife Management Importance and Methods

1. Wildlife Management Importance and Methods

2. Wildlife Management • Application of scientific knowledge and technical skills to protect, conserve, limit, enhance, or create wildlife habitat • Includes the implementation of laws regulating the use, kinds and amounts of wildlife people can harvest • Laws that protect existing habitat are considered wildlife management tools • Wildlife management should focus on all plant and animal species

3. Wildlife Population Management • Need to match wildlife numbers with available food, cover, and water sources so that healthy populations exists • Healthy populations: have the capability of increasing or maintaining stable numbers • Declining populations: receive no gains, but lose numbers yearly • To manage wildlife, on must determine the population status • Number of animals is determined by the difference in birthrate and death rate • Reproductive potential: ability of a population to increase

4. Wildlife Population Control • Reasons: • To mitigate significant economic loss • To control the spread of transmittable diseases • To minimize or prevent severe habitat alteration • To prevent human injury or death • To protect or sustain endangered, threatened, or native species

5. Ethics of Influencing Wildlife Population Control • Conservation Perspective: • Focus is on populations, species and ecosystems • Believes that other species have a “right” to exist • Recognizes dependency of wildlife on their habitats • Recognizes that human intervention is sometimes necessary to sustain species of habitats

6. Ethics of Influencing Wildlife Population Control • Animal Rights Perspective • Focused on individual sentient animals • Species and ecosystems are not morally considerable, but have “inherent value” • Believes that wild animals and ecosystems will survive if we simply “let them be” • Animal Welfare Perspecitve • Focus on individual sentient animals • Aimed at preventing cruelty • Believes pain, suffering, and loss of life should be minimized

7. Methods of Manipulating Wildlife Populations for Management Purposes • Legal Methods • Shooting, poisoning, lethal trapping, reintroduction of natural predators • Non-lethal methods • Live trapping followed by translocation • Chemical or surgical sterilization • Physical barriers (fences) • Vegetation management • Behavioral deterrents (Scare Devices – dogs, repellents) • All methods have benefits and limitations