Poultry, Fisheries & Wildlife Sciences
Open Access

Wildlife Ecology

Wildlife ecology is the science behind the practice of wildlife management that seeks to manage wildlife populations Wildlife ecology began as applied science discipline during the 1920s and 1930s at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with the development of an academic program by Aldo Leopold. Wildlife ecology is the science behind the practice of wildlife management that seeks to manage wildlife populations for the benefit of humans. Although people enjoy viewing wildlife and hunting animals for food and fur, conflicts arise because wild animals kill livestock, cause vehicle collisions, and damage crops. Wildlife ecology has become progressively more quantitative, especially since the 1990s; even so, it still retains a strong orientation toward techniques with an emphasis on statistical methods rather than ecological principles. In the early 1980s the discipline of conservation biology emerged mainly because wildlife ecology was slow to embrace modern ecological theory and broader concerns for the preservation of biodiversity. Since then, however, wildlife ecology has converged as essentially a subdiscipline of conservation biology focused largely on the applied ecology and management of wild populations of birds and mammals.

Related Journals of Wildlife Ecology: 

Avian Pathology, British Poultry Science, International Journal of Poultry Science, Journal of Applied Poultry Research