Five Managers, Five Continents, Perspectives Shared

Abstract

Wildlife management and conservation are dynamic, solving problems on landscapes where people live, work and recreate. Manager to manager exchanges are as relevant to advancing conservation knowledge as professional publications, but have yet to reach the same institutional/cultural application within our profession. Many in the world focus on total protection and protected areas as the basis for conservation, i.e. the Yellowstone model. Today, a new focus is emerging on conservation through management, recognizing that most of the world’s land base occurs outside of protected areas. This presentation will focus on shared experiences between wildlife managers on five continents. It will begin with introduced species (red deer) management and plant/rangeland ecology in the Patagonia region of Argentina; then disease concerns, wildlife tolerances, livestock husbandry in the Serengeti, Mara and Mara Conservancy areas of Tanzania and Kenya. It will bring perspectives to hunting season management of red deer and relationships to Amur tiger conservation in the Russian Far East. Finally, it will land in northern Europe to discuss livestock (reindeer) predation experienced by the Sámi people of Norway and Sweden, and their reindeer loss reimbursement approach. The experiences and perspectives gained and shared by Montana wildlife managers and biologists will be discussed, as they have changed our season setting applications and are refining predator/ prey/livestock management in Montana. In today’s time, manager to manager exchanges may become the most relevant approach to advancing new management and conservation thoughts, philosophies, research initiatives, and policies.