Wildlife Management I

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Wildlife Management I

• ES118 Spring 2008

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Overview

• REMINDER
• Exam Thursday does not cover Today and Wednesday
  (on next exam)

• Today
• Managing people and animals
• Case study tigers
• Changing attitudes
• Managing our wildlands
• Restoring wildlife
• Case study wolves
• Wednesday
• Ecosystem management
• Adaptive management
• Complexity and wildlife management
• Tools for predicting risk
• Scenario planning

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Humans and wildlife in perspective

• Humans and wildlife interacted throughout history
• exploited wild animals for food
• exploited animals for sport and culture
• we have modified landscapes
• we have moved species around the world
• Types of interactions
• Positive Agriculture and food production,
  aesthetics
• Negative Wild animals eat our livestock, damage
  our crops, compete for prey, maybe even kill or
  injure us

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Wildlife conflicts with people

• Estimated 22 billion damage from wildlife in US
  each year
• Record 237,766 cases of wildlife-human conflict
  in U.S. in 2002
• Approximately 40 occurred in urban and suburban
  settings

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Herbivores and conflict

• Crop-raiding
• Agricultural losses often significant
• More people killed each year by herbivores than
  large predators!
• Estimated 100-200 people killed each year by
  Asian elephants in India
• In Kenya, between 1990-97 elephants killed 221
  people compared to 250 by predators over same
  period!

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Challenge of managing wildlife
Great and terrible flesh-eating beasts have
always shared the landscape with humansThe teeth
of big predators, their claws, their ferocity and
their hunger, were grim realities that could be
eluded but not forgottenAmong the earliest forms
of human self awareness was the awareness of
being meat. -- David Quammen, Monster of God
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Carnivores and conflict

• Large carnivores among the most persecuted
• Many have experienced massive declines in US and
  globally
• Ultimately, retaliation is major cause of species
  endangerment/extinction
• Many factors that resulted in this decline still
  operating today

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Panthera tigris
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• Largest cat in the world

• Lives only in Asia

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Today tigers occupied only 7 of their historical
range. This represents a 93 range collapse over
the last 150 years
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Setting Priorities for Tiger Conservation 2005
2015 Sanderson, E.W., J. Forrest, C. Loucks,
J. Ginsberg, E. Dinerstein, J. Seidensticker, P.
Leimgruber, M. Songer, A. Heydlauff, T. OBrien,
G. Bryja, S. Klenzendorf, and E. Wikramanayake In
Tigers of the World R. Tilson and P. Nyhus, eds.
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Extinct Tiger Subspecies
Javan (sondaica)
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1970s
Estimated date of extinction
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Tiger Subspecies (Panthera tigris)
Siberian (Amur) (altaica)
Bengal (tigris)
Indochinese (corbetti)
South China (amoyensis)
Sumatran (sumatrae)
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Remaining tiger subspecies
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• Habitat loss, poaching, and inbreeding primary
  threats to tigers
• But retaliation for attacks a significant reason
  for tiger decline
• Killing people
• Killing livestock

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Managing human-wildlife conflict

• Carnivore management is as much a political
  challenge as a scientific one!
• Preservation
• Results in recovery of species
• But high costs, including political/social costs
• Modifying animal behavior
• E.g., sterilize, relocate, non-lethal deterrence
  (aversive stimuli), diversion (e.g., elk feeding
  areas)
• Modifying human behavior
• e.g., improve livestock husbandry
• Avoiding intersection of human and carnivore
  activities
• Barriers and exclusion (fences, trenches, walls)
• Zoning schemes

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Managing human-wildlife conflict (cont.)

• Lethal control
• Eradication
• Bounties
• Regulated harvest (typically with monitoring and
  permits)
• In US from 1996-2001 est. 13.7 million animals
  killed by federal agents to control agricultural
  damages
• South African government has said it will allow
  elephants to be culled for first time in 13 years

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• European colonists viewed New England as hostile
  wilderness full of evil and hardship to be
  conquered and tamed
• a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild
  beasts and wild men.
• William Bradford, leader of Plymouth Bay colony

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1832-1870s

• Rapid destruction of forests and wildlife in
  eastern N. America sparked early concern
• Some argued part of the wilderness should be
  owned by the people, managed by the government,
  and protected as a legacy for future generations

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George Caitlin
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Growth of a conservation ethic

• I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute
  freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a
  freedom and culture merely civil,--to regard man
  as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature,
  rather than a member of societyin Wilderness is
  the preservation of the world.
• - Walking, H. D. Thoreau

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Progressive Era Conservation
Theodore Roosevelt Gifford Pinchot
John Muir
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Preservation vs wise use

• John Muir (Founded Sierra Club)
• Preservationist philosophy of protecting
  wilderness areas like Yosemite Valley from
  economic development
• Gifford Pinchot (Chief of Division of Forestry,
  USFS, 1898)
• Wise Management of natural resources for economic
  development
• Led to development of wise use and sustained
  yield doctrines

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Growth of a land ethic and modern wildlife
management
The Land Ethic"The land ethic simply enlarges
the boundaries of the community to include soils,
waters, plants, and animals, or collectively the
land. "The Land Ethic" from A Sand County
Almanac
Aldo Leopold
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We reached the old wolf in time to watch a
fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized
then, and have known ever since, that there was
something new to me in those eyessomething known
only to her and to the mountain. I was young
then, full of trigger-itch I thought that
because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no
wolves would mean hunters paradise. But after
seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither
the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a
view. --Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac
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Wolves as evil

• Wolves once represented depravity of wildness
• One of first laws passed by Puritans of New Haven
  colony established bounty on wolves and foxes
• goal to eradicate predator populations
• Hunting with wild dogs and trapping in 1600s
• Habitat destruction (e.g,. draining wetlands)
• Wolves eliminated from most of New England and
  mid-Atlantic by end of the colonial period

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Wolf eradication

• Customary policy permitted indiscriminate killing
  of wildlife in many areas
• Between 1895 and 1917 30,000 wolf bounties
  claimed in Wyoming alone!
• 1914 congress appropriated funds for destruction
  of predators, including wolves, on public
  landsso killing wolves official policy of
  federal government
• By 1970s, however, in lower 48 states wolves only
  in MN (1,000?)

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Return of the wolves

• As a result of ESA and work of various groups,
  wolves making comeback
• Just a decade ago in 1995 wolves reintroduced to
  central Idaho and Yellowstone ecosystem of
  Wyoming, and Montana and Idaho
• Populations in MN have increased substantially,
  and recolonized (on their own) parts of WI, MI,
  and Montana
• USFWS also returning Mexican gray wolf to Arizona
  and red wolves to North Carolina

jump
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Wildlife compensation

• Reimburse people for damage by wildlife for
  crops, livestock, property, or injury/death to
  people
• Payment in cash or in-kind assistance
• Assistance with damage abatement measures
• Defenders of Wildlife developed first permanent
  compensation fund in US
• Since inception fund has paid over 270,000
• 225 ranchers compensated for 327 cows, 678 sheep,
  34 other animals
• In part led to successful recovery of wolves

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Wolves as symbol

• Challenge of problem definition What is the
  real issue? Biology? Politics? Values?
• Wolves (and other species) are often surrogate
  for broader cultural conflicts
• Endangered Species Act
• Public lands
• Preservation vs resource use
• Recreation vs extraction
• Urban vs rural
• States rights vs. federal control

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Wolf Recovery
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Success?

• USFWS announced the removal 2/21/08 of endangered
  species protections for gray wolves in the
  Northern Rocky Mountains, declaring the species
  "no longer faces the threat of extinction.
• Minimum recovery goal (at least 30 breeding pairs
  and 300 individual wolves for three consecutive
  years) exceeded in 2002
• Decision would allow states to impose their own
  management plans for gray wolves beyond federal
  land
• Wyoming's rule would allow hunting of wolves in
  the state's northwestern corner and let
  landowners also apply for a "lethal take permit"
  if they experience chronic wolf predation of
  their livestock or domesticated animals
• 11 environmental and animal rights groups plan to
  sue to stop the removal of gray wolves in the
  northern Rocky Mountains from ESA