Wildlife Management

Wildlife management involves the application of scientific knowledge and technical skills for protection, conservation and management of wildlife and their habitat. It is an interdisciplinary subject, since it includes biological, technological, social, economical and legal aspects. Wildlife includes all non-domesticated species of wild plants, wild animals and other organisms. Management of wildlife encompasses conservation of endangered, threatened and non-threatened species and their natural habitats. It also includes implementation of certain laws and acts related to wildlife. In fact, wildlife management tools are laws implemented to protect the existing natural habitats. Wildlife managers use ecological knowledge in order to bring a balance between the needs of populations and the needs of people.

Basically, there are two forms of wildlife management - manipulative management and custodial management. Manipulative management acts on wildlife population either directly or indirectly and balances the population densities, whereas custodial management acts indirectly in conserving wildlife population and its habitat by minimizing the external factors that are detrimental to their existence and growth such as hunting and animal cruelty.

Elements of Wildlife Management

Successful management of wildlife totally depends on certain elements and their coordination. Public support and awareness is necessary to protect wildlife and their habitats. Let’s discuss about the general elements of wildlife management.

Public Participation: It is necessary to make local people realize and accept the idea and importance of wildlife protection. Public interaction can help in making local people responsible and cooperate in enforcement of wildlife management laws and regulations. Public discussions should be held in order to understand people concepts on management programs and other necessary steps. Their feedback should also be taken for effective functioning of wildlife management.

Public Awareness: People should understand the concept of conservation of natural resources and protected areas. The wildlife managers and other responsible persons should held public discussions, shows, and talks and should also take help of other media like newspapers, magazines, radio, television and so on, to make people aware about the basic concepts behind wildlife management. This can stop people from exploitation of resources, which is the major threat to wildlife and their habitats.

Education: The role of education in pubic awareness programs is very important. There should be environmental subjects based on wildlife conservation. The well-educated and trained specialists on environmental and forest issues should participate in public training and interact with people and solve their queries to make them more responsible towards their wildlife management duties.

Nature Interpretation Centers: Nature interpretation centers may include setting up of educational camps or exhibition in nearby regions of protected areas such as zoological gardens, parks and wildlife sanctuaries. It is usually taken up by the concerned forest departments. It should be made compulsory for all the tourists to spare some time in the interpretation centers before entering parks or sanctuaries. The interpretation centers should be handled by qualified and trained staff in order to explain and motivate the concepts of wildlife management to the tourists and people of the nearby-protected areas.

Coordination: Wildlife management is operated at four basic levels - local, state, national and international. Government agencies plan the policies of protecting, conserving and managing wildlife. All the management levels participate in passing wildlife management tools and many a time, conflicts arise. Thus, proper understanding and coordination between the inter-departmental and inter-level is an important element for wildlife management.

The major protected sites developed for wildlife management include national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and biosphere reserves. In course of time, many animal species have become extinct either due to natural unavoidable reasons or human interference. The main objective of creating protected areas under wildlife management is to protect the wild flora and fauna and allow them to live in their natural habitat under natural or protected conditions.