Wildlife Management

Work with Wildlife!

The techniques and types of wildlife management vary depending on your location, and as with any job, you will find that you will need to carry out research into the local methods and types of wildlife management. This course is designed to give students a thorough introduction to the principles and practices of wildlife management common to many species around the globe.

This is an experiential learning-based course. Throughout your studies you will have the opportunity to network with and learn from a variety of industry professionals. Establishing real-world relationships and confidence is key to career success. 

Lesson Structure

There are 9 lessons in this course:

1. Introduction to Wildlife Management
   • What is Wildlife Management
   • Approaches to Wildlife Management (Preservation, Conservation, Management)
   • Purpose of Wildlife Management
   • Goals
   • Decision Making (Who makes decisions, Making good decisions)
   • Needs of Wildlife
   • What’s a Good Habitat
   • Limiting factor
   • Carrying capacity
   • Landscape Fragmentation
   • Habitat Diversity
   • Arrangement
   • Biological Control
   • Integrated Pest Management
2. Wildlife Ecology
   • Ecology (Mutualism, Commensalisms, Competition, Predation, parasitism, herbivory)
   • Behavioural Ecology
   • Population Ecology
   • Community Ecology
   • Ecosystem Ecology
   • Interactions within a Community
   • Competition
   • Predation
   • Parasitism
   • Commensalism
   • Mutualism
   • The Food Web (Detrital Web, Grazing Web, Trophic Levels)
   • Energy Flow
   • Imbalances
3. Wildlife Habitats
   • Introduction
   • Classification of Habitats
   • Biomes, Ecosystems, Microclimates
   • Timbered Biomes (Boreal Forest/ Taiga, Temperate Forest, Tropical Forest, Woodland)
   • Scrubland
   • Tropical Savannah
   • Temperate Grassland
   • Artic Tundra
   • Alpine
   • Semi-desert
   • Desert
   • Man Made Biomes (Urban, Agricultural)
   • Wet Biomes (Mangrove, Rivers, Benthos, Pelagic, Continental Shelf, Coral Reef,
   • Animal Use of Features in Biomes (Trees, Logs, Surface Rocks and Ground Cover, Creeks, Wetlands and Dams)
   • Case Studies
   • Changes to Habitats (Physical, Biological, Pollution)
   • Water for Wildlife
   • Siting Water Points
   • Managing Trees
   • Deforestation
   • Afforestation
4. Population Dynamics
   • Populations
   • Birth or Fecundity Rate
   • Death or Mortality Rate
   • Growth Rate
   • Life Tables
   • Cohort or Dynamic Life Tables (Age Specific)
   • Static or Time Specific Life Tables
   • Rodents
   • Squirrels
   • Rabbits
   • Mosquitoes
   • Grasshoppers
   • Case Studies of different animals in different countries
5. Carrying Capacity
   • Introduction
   • Exponential Population Growth
   • What is Carrying Capacity
   • Fisheries stock management (stock Identification, assessment, biomass)
   • Stock Management Methods
6. Wildlife Censuses
   • Introduction and census types
   • Total Counts
   • Sampling (Simple Random, Stratified Random, Systemic, Two Stage, Double sampling)
   • Accuracy vs Precision
   • Bias Errors
   • Aerial Surveys
   • Trapping
   • Transects
   • Indirect Methods
   • Mark-Recapture method
   • Roadside and Call Counts
   • Mapping
   • Sampling methods for specific types of animals (ie. Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, Invertebrates, Mammals etc.)
   • Animal Ethics
   • Case Study
7. Wildlife Management Techniques
   • Habitat Modification
   • Fire
   • Vegetation Management
   • Predator Control
   • Habitat Features
   • Seeding
   • Population Monitoring
   • Captive Breeding and Release
   • Culling and Cropping
   • Control of pest or undesirable wildlife species
   • Control Objectives
   • Effects of Control
   • Control Techniques (Manipulating mortality, fertility, Genetic Engineering, indirect methods)
8. Wildlife Management Law and Administration
   • Policy and Wildlife Law
   • International Environmental Law
   • Treaties
   • International Customary Laws
   • Hard vs Soft Law
   • Domestic/National Law
   • Evolving Domestic Law
   • Sources of Legislation
   • Environmental Ethics
   • Enforcement
9. Wildlife Management Case Study Research Project
   • Problem Based Learning Project with following aims:
   • Identify the objectives of a management program for an endangered species.
   • Determine appropriate techniques for carrying out a census of an endangered species.
   • Identify techniques for increasing the population of the endangered species.
   • Identify pest species and their undesirable effect on the endangered species of bird.
   • Identify techniques for reducing the undesirable impacts of the pest species on the endangered bird.
   • Present a management plan in a form that is appropriate for use by wildlife workers.

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Develop a concept of how man manages wildlife populations in different situations around the world.
• Understand and discuss the principles of wildlife ecology.
• Understand wildlife habitats and their importance to managing wildlife.
• Explain how populations of any one species change and adapt to variations in their environment.
• Understand carrying capacity and its importance in managing wildlife populations.
• Explain a range of different methods used to determine the number of individuals in a wildlife population.
• Discuss a range of different wildlife management techniques.
• Explain the potentials and limitations of legal and administrative initiatives, in the pursuance of more effective wildlife management.
• Examine a specific wildlife management case of interest to the student.

What You Will Do

• Contact (either in person, email or by telephone) an organisation involved in wildlife management such as a National Park, wildlife reserve, zoo, etc to research their wildlife management program.
• In your locality, find out about one pest species of wildlife and one endangered or threatened species of native wildlife. Research what happened to make these animals pests or endangered.
• Visit a natural area in your locality and observe the organisms in the area and their interactions with each other and the environment.
• Explain what trophic levels are and how energy flows between them.
• Define habitat, biome, vegetation formation and feeding radius.
• Visit a zoo, wildlife park, game reserve, pet shop, fauna sanctuary or other place where wild animals are kept in captivity to observe the animals in their captive surroundings and compare these with their native surroundings.
• Identify a predator-prey relationship between two species in a local ecosystem and make predictions about changes to this relationship.
• Research the difference between r and K strategists in animals.
• Design a wildlife survey using a suitable sampling technique. Write this survey up as a mini scientific report containing an Abstract/Project Summary, Methods and materials section, Results/Discussion and Conclusion.
• Research the success of one wildlife program where wildlife have been bred in captivity and then released.
• Draw up a table that lists the advantages and disadvantages of allowing hunting to proceed in game parks where the animals being hunted are native to the area.
• Telephone or contact a wildlife management agency in your area to determine the relevant local, regional, national and international laws that apply to wildlife in your locality.
• Prepare a report on a population of animals surveyed during the course.

Approaches to Wildlife Management

Preservation

Wildlife preservation is maintaining a wildlife population or habitat as close as is practicable to its natural state; areas are protected from alteration from their natural state, and human influence is minimised. However, in some cases active management may be required to maintain or recreate naturally occurring populations of animals and plants, control or eliminate exotic species, or to protect threatened areas of critical habitat. Changes in natural ecosystems, such as vegetation succession in forests or swamps may not always be favourable for some wildlife, and initiating successions through fire or other means may be implemented to maintain ecosystem diversity. 

An example of preservation is the management of the whooping crane (Grus americana), found in North America, where its population has grown from a critical level of 15 individuals to just under 300 due to the preservation of key breeding sites such as Wood Buffalo National Park. An ecosystem example is the establishment of world heritage areas for nature conservation.

Conservation

Conservation can have various meanings to different groups. In this course, conservation means that wildlife managers are actively managing a natural system to maintain and use natural resources in such a way as to preserve its biodiversity for future generations of humans and animals.  Therefore, wildlife conservation is a sector of the sustainable management of biodiversity. For example, in Uganda, East Africa, statutes are in place to allow for the protection of wildlife whilst allowing managers to sustainably harvest resources such as timber. 

Wildlife Management

Wildlife management involves the manipulation of wildlife populations to achieve specific objectives for wildlife and humans.  Management is the focus of this course.  It involves the manipulation of populations to achieve specific objectives for wildlife and humans.  This manipulation may be in order to increase the size of the population, to “harvest” animals in a sustainable way or to reduce or stabilise a population.  Management can be applied to both pest and desirable species.  For example, across most of Australia, the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is a major pest species as a predator of native wildlife and livestock. Wildlife managers are controlling red fox populations through a baiting program in conjunction with trapping and shooting.  

Purpose of Wildlife Management

There are many different reasons why we might want to manage wildlife, and the relative importance of those reasons can vary from place to place, both within regions, nations, and globally. This importance can also change from time to time.

Managing a particular species may be critical in one country, where for various reasons it has become a pest; while the same species may in a different country be controlled by nature with very little need for intervention by man. For example, wild rabbit populations in the UK are largely controlled by natural predators such as foxes. But in Australia, introduced European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) have few predators and, in some cases, have reached major pest populations where they are threatening habitats and competing with native species for resources. In such cases, they are managed by biological control through pathogen release, and through trapping, burring warrens and commercial harvesting.

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