BEN205 Wildlife Management

Get a head start on your career in Wildlife Management...

This course will give students a broad based introduction to wildlife management that can be applied to all types of wildlife around the globe. It can serve as a course in its own right or as part of a higher qualification in environmental or nature park management.
Lesson Structure

There are 9 lessons in this course:

Introduction to Wildlife Management
Wildlife Habitats
Wildlife Ecology
Population Dynamics
Carrying Capacity
Wildlife Censuses
Wildlife Management Techniques
Wildlife Management Law and Administration
Wildlife Management Case Study Research Project

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.
To understand 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

Network with individuals and organisations involved in wildlife management (over the internet, by phone, mail or in person -There's lots of flexibility in how you do this!)
Research pest species of wildlife and endangered species or threatened species of wildlife.
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 of no less than 1000 words on a population of animals surveyed during the course.

Extracts from the Course
Reasons for managing wildlife may (amongst other things) include:

The population of an animal may be increasing too much and is impacting (or may impact) on other species (plant and animal).
Inadvertent introduction of a non indigenous species to an area may have changed the balance of nature.
Climate change, abnormal events (eg. Natural disaster) or development activity, may have changed or caused instability in the balance of nature.
Control of disease carried by animals (Diseases that affect domestic animals, livestock, other wildlife and even humans).
Conserving threatened species.
Studying different species.
Sustaining a harvestable resource (eg. Fish populations in the oceans).
Protecting individual animals from unnecessary or unethical harm.

Goals of Wildlife Management

The goals of wildlife management vary considerably with the situation. Goals of wildlife management include:

to maintain a desirable population at a certain level.
to reduce the population of an undesirable species.
to allow for sustainable removal of animals from a population – for example, for hunting purposes.
to increase numbers of an endangered species.