What exactly is wildlife damage management? There are a number of descriptive terms for this profession: animal damage control, animal damage management, vertebrate pest control (or management), pest control (or management), wildlife pest control (or management), and wildlife damage control (or management). It is enlightening to review the terms in these descriptions, and to see what they tell us about the profession.
It is significant that each of the terms consists of an action word ("control" or "management") with descriptive modifiers (e.g., in "wildlife damage management", "management" is the definitive action term, "damage" describes what is to be managed, and "wildlife" further describes the subset of damage). With that in mind, it would behoove us to use the best modifiers available when coining a descriptive term. In the phrases used above, we used words like "animal", "vertebrate", "pest", and "wildlife" to describe the nature or kind of damage that this profession attempts to manage or control.
The term "animals" is rather broad and vague in that it covers all living things that are not plants. Spiders, jellyfish, fish, frogs, snakes, birds, and mammals are all animals. Traditionally, "Animal Control" is a term that applies to city or county agencies that manage escaped or free-ranging domestic animals, particularly dogs and cats.
The term "vertebrate" refers to the subset of animals that have backbones. While the term "vertebrate" is more specific than the broader term "animal", it is still overly broad. While spiders and jellyfish are not vertebrates, fish, frogs, snakes, birds, and mammals all have backbones. The term "vertebrate" also does not distinguish between wild and domestic animals. Perhaps more importantly, vertebrate is not a word familiar to many people who do not have biological training. Because the term is not well known to the general public, it may not be the best choice as a defining term.
The term "pest" is widely used by private insect control entities ("Pest Control Operators"). However, the term "pest" can apply to either plants or animals, as any gardener will attest. "Pest" can also refer to either domestic or wild individuals. Because it has such a broad meaning, this term is awkward to use in a title. The term is also subjective and negative.
The term "wildlife" technically refers to all undomesticated plants and animals but, more popularly, it refers to wild and feral mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. Of all the terms considered, "wildlife" comes the closest to specifying the particular types of organisms that cause the problems wildlife damage managers focus on. We are wildlife managers who manage the damage caused by wildlife, not the damage caused by pet dogs, domestic cattle, or squid.
When we focus on wildlife as the object of our attentions, what do we do with these animals? The terms listed above note that we either "control" or "manage" them. I find this an interesting comparison. When resolving a wildlife damage issue, is our focus on controlling an animal or a situation, or on managing an animal or a situation? Does it even make a difference?
Our bias is that wildlife damage specialists manage wildlife. We manage them by excluding them with fences or barriers. We manage them by using repellents to manipulate their behavior. We manage them by catching them, and then releasing or euthanizing them. Could we not say the same thing using the word "control"? Control implies dominion, or total supremacy. In fact, if we could really control animals, we would have taken care of wildlife damage issues long ago. If we could control raccoons, why do they still get in attics? If we could control coyotes, why do they still kill sheep? If we could control white-tailed deer, why do they still carry disease-bearing ticks, eat agricultural crops and horticultural plantings, and fail to avoid our speeding vehicles? We do not want anyone to assume that we have responsibility or control over an animal's behavior!
Put another way, are our actions directed at controlling or managing the situation? "Control" generally indicates the power of regulating or subduing a situation (to have control over the outcome"), while "manage" generally indicates that one is administering or overseeing the situation ("attempting to have influence on the outcome"). While it may be desirable to have control in wildlife damage situations, in many cases one is lucky to have a directing influence. You can often manage the variables of a situation toward a desired end, but you seldom truly control the wildlife situation. Thus, it is more accurate to use the term "management" rather than "control".
We really don't control wild animals. The best we can do is to manage their damaging behaviors with fences, repellents or traps. Sometimes, we use lethal tools to totally eliminate particular damaging behaviors. Modern wildlife damage management manipulates individual animals to reduce or eliminate damaging behaviors. We manage wildlife. However, we manage wildlife because of these damaging behaviors. It is the presence of damage or the potential for damage that triggers corrective action, not merely the presence of wildlife.
Finally, we need to discuss the issue of "damage." What exactly is "damage"? This issue brings in the human component of the management equation. What is considered an unacceptable level of damage to one person might not be labeled damage by another. For example, gray wolves in Alaska are reported by local wildlife biologists to be limiting caribou numbers in some areas. For the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and for caribou hunters (both native subsistence and sport hunters), excess wolf predation on caribou is considered "damage." However, members of the Sierra Club and some other environmental and animal activists might not see wolf predation on caribou as damage at all. They might envision this predation as entirely normal and something to be promoted rather than discouraged. Another example would be coyotes in Los Angeles County, California, where some people complain that the coyotes are eating their pets and threatening their children (damage) while their neighbors feed the coyotes because they happen to like coyotes (no damage). In both of these cases, the label placed on the behaviors of these coyotes and wolves is human-dependent. This makes wildlife damage management the interesting profession that it is. Damage is human-dependent. Take away the human component, and damage does not exist.
For these reasons, we prefer the term "wildlife damage management" over the other candidate terms out there. This brings us back to our initial question: what is wildlife damage management?
The oldest conference in North America (and probably the world) dedicated to wildlife damage management is the Vertebrate Pest Conference, first held in 1962. At the very first conference, Dr. Walter E. Howard, the general chairman of the conference and now a professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, defined a vertebrate pest as "... any native or introduced, wild or feral, non-human species of vertebrate animal that is currently troublesome locally, or over a wide area, to one or more persons, either by being a health hazard, a general nuisance, or by destroying food, fiber, or natural resources." For us, Howard's definition is an excellent definition of wildlife damage, and wildlife damage management is the management of wild animals causing the type of damage he described. He also encompassed the variability of humans into his definition.
Described another way, a wildlife damage manager is a professional "buffer" between wildlife and humans, protecting humans from animals while at the same time protecting wildlife from humans. The wildlife damage management professional needs to be able to understand humans as well as he or she understands wildlife. Ironically, this human element tends to be a weak link in our educational chain. Wildlife damage management professionals tend to be well trained in their technologies and in wildlife biology, and not well trained in sociology, anthropology, economics, history, psychology, or political science -- the "human dimension" fields.
So what is wildlife damage management? Wildlife damage management is the art and the science of manipulating habitats, wildlife, and humans to alleviate damage issues. The professional wildlife damage manager, biologist, or administrator is dedicated to this task. Successful wildlife damage management might best be accomplished by managing the involved wildlife, environment, or people, or by a combination of all these interrelated factors.
Last updated: 4 May 2000