Intro to Wildlife Management

Intro to Wildlife Management

• Wildlife management = people management

  • more about people than wildlife!

• Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, more of a philosopher

• Delta prairie marshes, Delta waterfowl; book about this “Canvasback…?”

What is wildlife management?

• Concern about wildlife populations

• Care about the wildlife population left after hunting season

• Population stability, how do we manage it as it goes up and down

• Carrying capacity—when it goes down, habitat recovers, when it goes up the habitat suffers (wildlife consuming vegetation)

What is wildlife?

• According to NC statute, “wild animals, wild birds, and all fish found in inland fishing waters”

• Wildlife can be game or non-game species

• “All undomesticated terrestrial creatures”

• Domesticated animals not considered game species… not considered wildlife

• Feral swine/cats/dogs not considered wildlife—considered invasive species needed to be managed

• It all interacts, all important, linked by ecosystem

• Populations of organisms that persist without an essential component of human intervention

  • reproduction

  • survival

  • habitat manipulation

• “…any free-living species from invertebrate to vertebrate” ESA 1969

• “…the practical ecology of all vertebrates and their plant and animal associates” JWM 1937

• Value?

  • Social

  • Economic—leasing, land values

  • Cultural

  • Aesthetic

  • Recreation

  • Ecosystem function/services

  • Religion/spiritual—beauty, wilderness

  • Food—protein

  • Material—clothing

  • Scientific—medicines (80% of world uses some sort of herbal medicine or supplement)

    • rattlesnake venom → diabetes research

    • essential oils

• Wildlife biologists against fish farming—because they are dependent on humans, become domesticated

What is management?

• “influence and application of human manipulation”

  • demands the use of judicious means to achieve specified objectives

• However, some disliked the term

  • implies dominance

• In 1907, Gifford Pinchot came up with the term “conservation” — wise use

  • preservation is hands off

  • conservation is hands on—clear cut forest, replant it (management with goal for having forest again), remove invasive species, etc

Conservation?

• Conservation implies saving

  • For later use

  • Conservation means wise use of earth and its resources for the lasting good on man - Pinchot

• Sustainability implies use

• Preservation (protectionism) implies no human intervention

  • hands off'

Wildlife Management/Conservation

• is based on basic ecological principles

  • home range, survival rates, mortality rates, reproductive rates

  • habitat use, habitat availability

    • White tail deer survival rate… What kills them? → predators (how many fauns do they kill? how many fauns make it a few weeks? how many are killed in accidents? predator, vehicle, human mortality? faun abandonment in drought)

    • White tail deer mate in Oct, Nov, Dec → birth in May, June, July

    • Feral swine breed every 120 days, very different reproductive rates, so different regulation

• habitat management and enhancement

  • 3 essentials for us and wildlife—water, food, shelter

Definition of Wildlife Management

• The art of making the land produce sustained annual crops of wild game for recreational use (Leopold 1933)

• The art and science of manipulating populations and habitats for the animals and human benefit (Anderson 1999)

• Not a pure science

• “Wildlife management is the application of ecological knowledge to populations of vertebrate animals and their plant and animal associates in a manner that strikes a balance between the needs of those populations and the needs of people” - Robinson and Bolen

• Wildlife management involves knowledge about how to manage and deal with

  • human population numbers

  • human consumption

  • habitat and environmental stewardship

• Draws from many fields and disciplines

  • art

  • experience

• Immigrating people require a lot of land, which impacts wildlife

  • wildlife hit by cars

  • more food required

  • more shelter required

  • more water required

• Hunters % of population declining although the # of hunters is the same relatively, becoming a lost art

Wildlife Management Triad

• Populations

• Habitats

• People

  • biological, ecological, sociological, and economic components

    • more social and political concerns than biological

    • population boundaries difficult to define

• Wildlife management = people management

• Often, science is overlooked in wildlife management for more sociological factors… need to examine NA Model, which is being degraded by being socially pushed aside

  • politics interfering with wildlife management

  • NCWRC concerned about hunters pushing back, not willing to listen to science about wildlife management

Times have changed

• increased urbanization

• increased development

• fewer natural or wild areas

• urban/rural interfaces is expanding

• increased human/animal interactions

• increased need for animal damage control or integrated pest management

• Hunters fund most of wildlife conservation by buying hunting licenses

  • Delta Waterfowl buys land with raised funds, restores marshes

  • Lifetime license money is invested

  • Federal Duck Stamp $25

The fix

• More money is needed for conservation

• Non-game and game species

“Firearms and ammunition excise tax collections have increased from 288 million in FY 2007 to 750 million in 2016”

“The disposition of the custodial revenue…with the exception of the Federal firearms and ammunition Federal firearms and ammunition federal excise taxes". Those funds were remitted to the Fish and Wildlife Restoration Fund”

Scientific Management

• Leopold first trained Wildlife Program 1930’s

• Carrying capacity, managed hunting opportunities, habitat restoration, game recovery and stability

• Life history traits

• Politics vs. Science management

Reality

• Poltiics (captive cervids), ballot initiatives, excessive public involvement

• Wildlife management is PEOPLE management

• California Wildlife Protection Act forbids hunting mountain lions, deer, and endangered species in California; paid for by taxpayers; but it is not a good situation for wildlife or sportsmen; mountain lions are NOT endangered though; so biologists are not longer given the ability to make the decision, the uneducated people are who give the government control; so scientific management here is political

  • California governor hunted a mountain lion legally in another state, people wanted him to resign, he told them it’s none of their business

The Fix

• Reform the Equal Access to Justice Act-Wildlife activists hide behind this to sue Agencies and collect state money

• Because of unintended provisions that incentivize and reward environmental litigants for filing suit against federal regulatory and land management agencies, consequentially hindering pro-active, cooperative, conservation efforts

• Wolves introduced to Yellowstone; biologists tracked population numbers; defenders of wildlife people sued so wolves wouldn’t be delisted from endangered species and state kill them, but why would the state kill them all?

• The Endangered Species Act is not followed by defenders of wildlife, call for it to be removed

Legitimate Use

• Grinnell created Wise Use — Conservation — Do not waste

• Food, fur, self-defense, property protection

• Democratic rules of laws helped guide the questions of how to accomplish Conservation

• Ethics developed — unwritten codes and fair chase — Sustainable

  • fair chase; don’t use drones to find animals to hunt, drone to scare ducks to fly to you, trail cameras to identify hotspots of animals

  • banned to bait bears with processed foods like peanut butter/candy that rot their teeth and decrease life expectancy

Reality

• Hunters and voters are in constant struggled to define what is proper

• Food, morally right or wrong, behavior

  • disconnection from where our food comes from

  • some animals viewed more morally valuable than others; giraffe vs. deer; giraffe killed was killing young giraffes, meat stayed in community, wildlife tourism generated revenue in community

The fix

• Must educate voters on divisive terms

  • sport hunting, poaching, trophy hunting

• All hunters/fishers must be willing to call out and defend our principles

• Behave appropriately in public

  • encourage hunters not to send the wrong message about the reason they hunt by doing things like putting dead animals on cars, etc

Prohibit Commerce in Dead Wildlife

• remove commercial value of wildlife

• unregulated exploitation led to the extinction of the passenger pigeons and other species

• The Lacey Act of 1900 banned trafficking of game meat allowing wildlife to recover

• Migratory Bird Treaty 1918

Reality

• Time has eroded the law

• Farmed venison/elk/bison/salmon/tilapia

• Taxidermy can be legally purchased

• Live animals bought and sold — elk, bison, deer

  • CWD found on deer farms

• Wild Fish bought, sold, moved

The fix

• Stop farmed wildlife and fish

  • disease issues

  • Paul Greenberg (American Catch, Four Fish)

  • salmon need 3 pounds of fish meat for food

  • what if GMO salmon escape into wild? what happens to the wild genetics?

Democratic rule of law

• everyone has the opportunity to influence conservation

• Public heating

• Advocacy—1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Conservation Act, ESA, Wilderness Act

  • Rachel Carson

Reality

• Ballot iniatives—sensational messages

  • the choice is in the hands of the voters not science

• When is enough-enough and when is it too much

The fix

• This principle may be too broken to fix

  • corruption/lobbyists

• Social media inaccuracies

  • 24 hour news

• develop a super majority to pass any wildlife management measures

• For example, California mountain lions

International Resource

• Waterfowl - US, Canada, Mexico, Japan

• Joint Custody to coordinate conservation and management

• Migratory Bird Treaty Act 1918 illegal to kill waterfowl except under a very regulated hunting season— works well

• Tuna—works badly

Reality

• the USFWS has had to move away from just managing waterfowl

• Now they are tasked with pollinators, endangered species (not bad except -)

• Lack of budgets have hurt all species

• More pressure is put on hunters/fishers to advocate and fund conservation

• USFWS makes budget cuts because lack of money, employees at small parks go first, national parks getting closed