Wildlife Management: To Cull or Not to Cull?

I have always thought that “Wildlife Management” was a loose term.  Regardless of geographical location, wildlife lives in fragmented habitats, held inside imaginary borders meant to protect and conserve.  It is a daily struggle for humans and wild animals to co-exist.  As the human population continues to increase, wildlife is pushed to the edge of extinction.  Animals are culled to keep numbers in check according to management plans, as well as illegally poached for their parts or killed out of ignorance and fear.   So what does it mean to manage wildlife? In the early 1900s, the United States government initiated …

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Peace and Place For All

When I first began working in the field of wildlife conservation I was very naïve.  It was so easy to come up with solutions to habitat loss and species survival when humans were not factored into the equation.  It was so very simple to point an accusatory finger.  Part of the learning curve in this line of work is to understand that for every person who carries out atrocities against wildlife and their habitat, there are at least five that want to save them.  In addition, identifying the driving force behind such horrific events is just as much of the …

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Extinction: The Final Countdown

The word extinction has shown up several times in the news lately regarding the population status of some wildlife species.  All too often we can identify species that have been deemed extinct, but we are not given an explanation of how this came to be.  Historically, or I should say prehistorically, we know that a meteor striking the earth and an ice age contributed to the extinction of thousands of species.  Note that these catastrophic events were natural disasters.  However, what about the extinctions as of late?  Internationally, we still experience natural disasters all the time, but what is their …

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7 Billion and Counting

Last month the world population reached 7 billion.  In only 12 short years, since ~October 1999, the human population has increased by 1 billion.  Let us take a few moments to think about the fact that we now share this planet with 6,999,999,999 other people… and counting.  If our global growth rate continues, it is anticipated that by 2050, you could be one of 10 billion!  So what exactly does this increase mean for the other species that share our space?  Furthermore, what do 7 billion humans mean for the environment?  Regardless, if we live in a developing or industrialized …

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