Wildlife Ecology, Conservation, and Management
Wildlife Ecology, Conservation, and Management– Introduction: goals and decisions.
This book is structured as two interlocking parts. The first part provides an overview of wildlife ecology, as distinct from that portion of applied ecology that is called wildlife management and conservation.
We have observed that many courses offered in wildlife management do not stipulate a solid grounding in ecology as a prerequisite.
The chapters on wildlife ecology (Chapters 2–12) are there to remedy that defect. These chapters cover such topics as growth and regulation of wildlife populations, spatial patterns of population distribution, interactions among plants, herbivores, carnivores, and disease pathogens.
While these topics are often covered in introductory biology or ecology courses, they rarely focus on the issues of most concern to a wildlife specialist.
We view wildlife management and conservation as applied ecology. You will have trouble applying it unless you know some. In particular, you will need an understanding of the theory of population dynamics and of the relationship between populations, their predators, and their resources if you are to make sensible judgments on the likely consequences of one management action versus another.
The second part deals with wildlife conservation and management (Chapter 13 onwards). These chapters cover census techniques, how to test hypotheses experimentally, how to evaluate alternative models as tools for conservation and management, and the three aspects of wildlife management: conservation, sustained yield, and control.