Search Results

This chapter discusses the redefinition of term ‘conservation’ which is extended not only to game reserves but also to the wildlife. In the nineteenth century, the conservation of forest landscapes was hampered by wild animals. While Assamese revered wild animals, the colonial government eradicated them to forward and expand its agrarian frontier. Although forest conservation was one of the policies of the government, the conservation of wildlife was often ignored. The wildlife conservation was a later phenomenon and came only after a proper understanding of the importance of wildlife in native society. Since 1905, colonial rules and non-colonial personnel took active interest in protecting the wildlife. And in 1990s onwards, active and staunched protection of wildlife was given prominence in the vernacular press of India. Among the issues discussed herein are zoology, wildlife crime, privileged hunting, elephant hunting, and the contemporary practices in the wildlife preservation.

The basic premise of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation is that government wildlife agencies, funded by revenues from public hunting and fishing, use scientific knowledge and expertise to manage wildlife for the public good. Promoted as a century-long success story, the model establishes how wildlife will be used and who gets to decide. But there are concerns about its role and adequacy, including continuing species, population, and habitat losses and growing criticism of scientific management, experts and their roles in society, and the management agencies. This chapter describes the model's doctrine and formula and some of its problems, along with key elements of the social context, the status of wildlife, and the decision process in order to assess how the model has performed in practice. This appraisal suggests a problem definition based on public trust and common interests and offers three strategic options to adapt the model to new circumstances and enhance wildlife conservation.

Arable (also known as rowcrop fields) is land that is cultivated regularly for production of food and, increasingly, bioenergy. The value of arable land to wildlife is heavily influenced by the presence of permanent grassland and other uncropped habitats along its boundaries, such as hedgerows, scattered trees, water-filled drainage ditches, grass strips, and stone walls. This chapter discusses the management of arable land. Topics covered include farming systems and crop types, minimizing pesticide and fertilizer use on field margins, providing cultivated but unsown areas within fields, minimizing destruction of birds' nests during mechanical operations, providing unharvested crops for birds to eat, and manipulating flooding regimes.

The wolf as both an endangered species and an animal with abundant charisma returned to the West at a critical time. If the reintroduction of the wolf had not occurred when it did, one of the greatest wildlife conservation success stories in history would not have become a reality. For many, our willingness to co-exist with the restored wolf in the lower forty-eight states has moved the American relationship with wildlife even further away from the divisive Western worldview to a more Japanese worldview that sees us and wild nature as points on a continuum. This change is embedded in the debunking of the “bloodthirsty wolf myth” and an improved awareness of a predator’s right to exist, encouraged by more appropriately valuing its presence against other competing values. For the red wolf, its reintroduction to northeastern North Carolina has provided a powerful educational tool for engaging the public and improving their ecological and economic understandings of the value of wildlife. The return of a charismatic predator like the wolf to the lower forty-eight is not only changing the narrative regarding this animal, but has given us the opportunity to assign its presence tremendous value for future generations.

Urban areas, gardens, and backyards can support a diverse range of wildlife, including a number of species rare in or absent from more semi-natural habitats. This chapter discusses the general principles of the management of these areas. It also briefly discusses management of mineral-extraction sites and developed land or buildings that are not currently in use, commonly known as brownfield or post-industrial sites. Mineral-extraction sites usually occur in the wider countryside, but are discussed here because of their similarity to brownfield sites.

This chapter examines wildlife conservation in Africa, focusing on how South Africa is dealing with conservation challenges that are common to all African countries. It describes the obstacles that confront wildlife conservation in Africa: diminishing financial support from the government, declining profitability of parks, loss of skilled staff, changing social expectations of product quality, land claims by descendants of evicted residents, and ecosystem limitations including migration, diseases, reduced water quantity and quality, fire, and the impact of large herbivores. It also discusses the establishment of transfrontier parks that are dedicated to wildlife conservation and ecotourism.

One way to understand military-to-wildlife transitions is through the framework of Risk Society offered by sociologist Ulrich Beck. Beck outlines the risks assumed by aging industrial societies and how these extend both over time and across space to impact nature and society. This chapter describes how military-to-wildlife land use changes fit the terms of risk society, and how these risks pose challenges to the environmental gains that seem to come from such transitions. It also examines how wildlife refuges created from military lands struggle to fit within usual categories of public lands.

This chapter presents case studies of wildlife management in Australasia to explore the goals of animal welfare science and animal conservation science with respect to wild and free-living animals. It highlights the trend in Australasia (as embodied by the Australasian Wildlife Management Society) to treat symptoms (invasive or presumed overabundant species) rather than examining causes (habitat change, loss of connectivity), restricting avenues of decision making that lead to nonlethal solutions. Lack of consideration for individual well-being is rife from pest management to environmental restoration projects. The chapter emphasizes the need for a paradigm shift by presenting examples of wildlife management of macropodid marsupials to tease out the implications of adopting individual well-being in conservation and management. It also provides guidelines for policy/paradigm shifts necessary to bring about compassionate conservation in Australasia and sets out future objectives.

Chapter 5 examines the environmental and wildlife conservation issues with reference to hunting in colonial India. Addressing the issues of forestry, environment, and empire in relation to Indian wildlife, it is possible to evaluate the ways in which the British contested, constructed, and tailored wildlife conservation attitudes to meet the needs of smooth governance, while maintaining the imperial sport of hunting. Against this backdrop, the chapter explains how the issue of conservation remained in tension with imperial hunting and exploitation in colonial India. While explaining these intricacies, this study suggests that the British ruled tigers, elephants, and the native people through their inconsistencies rather than from a unified Orientalist ideology. In this, the reader would learn how the British attitudes and the policies implemented were situational and pragmatic. More importantly, it points to a story that signifies the ability of the powerful to change attitudes and shift behaviours according to the circumstances. Thus in colonial India, tigers were seen as the symbolic enemies of civilization, noxious creatures that were in the way of economic development and tragic symbols of a decimated nature, all at the same time, whereas elephants were left alone because of their usefulness. Extermination and preservation of species thus went hand-in-hand so that colonial interests rather than animal welfare could be promoted.

This chapter considers how Disney packages and sells nature as part of its collection of goods at the Disney Animal Kingdom Theme Park. It addresses Disney's influence as a cultural producer and its longstanding project of reimagining nature, which culminated most recently in the construction of the Animal Kingdom. It explores Disney's efforts to remake itself as an agent of conservation through its “Environmentality” program and projects like the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund. It concludes with a discussion of Disney's role as a biopolitical institution that enframes nature, and draws out lessons about how one of the most influential corporations in the world acts as an agent in the construction of a particular brand of green governmentality.

This chapter focuses on evaluating the effects of hunting with dogs on wildlife populations and the importance of these impacts for conservation and wildlife management. It examines scenarios in which the use of dogs can bias harvests towards one sex or the other, or to a particular age category in the prey population. It also considers the documentation of the effects of hunting with dogs on the habitat use and ranging behavior of wildlife populations.

This chapter examines the role of Africa's professoriate of the hunt in international ivory poaching. The story of Shadrek Mataruse, the legendary ivory hunter of Mahenye in Zimbabwe, illustrates the role of kinship networks in his use of guns to harvest ivory from northern Gonarezhou National Park. Shadrek, known as the Bvekenya of Mahenye, was arguably the most famous mupocha around Gonarezhou since Cecil Barnard. Shadrek was not hunting alone. The 1980s were possibly the worst period of poaching ever experienced in Gonarezhou's history. This chapter considers four stages of anti-poaching: arrest criteria, procedures to follow when confronting poachers, prosecution of the suspects, and sentencing them. It also describes CAMPFIRE (Communal Area Management Programme for Indigenous Resources), a program founded in 1989 by Rowan Martin to undertake the development of rural areas in Africa through incentive-based wildlife conservation.

This chapter examines how American zoological gardens responded to the rapid, nearly simultaneous decline of two iconic species at the turn of the nineteenth century: the bison and the passenger pigeon. The North American continent once supported extensive populations of both species, which inspired awe and wonder in the European settlers who encountered them. During the second half of the nineteenth century, however, habitat destruction, competition from exotic species, and especially large-scale commercial exploitation facilitated by newly constructed rail networks produced dramatic declines in both populations. As a result, the bison and the passenger pigeon were both facing extinction by the end of the nineteenth century. Wildlife conservationists successfully mobilized to save the bison, and the New York Zoological Park (opened in 1899) began a captive bison herd that helped repopulate several newly created federal reserves in the West. They failed, however, to rally behind the passenger pigeon, and the last known specimen perished at the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914. The New York Zoological Park’s captive breeding experiments proved the exception rather than the rule during this period, when zoos remained primarily focused on entertaining and educating the public, rather than trying to save endangered species.

Zoological parks can be great places to inspire wonder, stoke curiosity, connect with nature, gather with family, and have fun. In addition, modern, professionally managed zoos are conservation organizations, committed to securing a healthy future for the natural world. From its inception in 1962, the Phoenix Zoo has demonstrated its commitment to contributing to species recovery. Raising imperiled native species for release to the wild, surveying and monitoring field sites in collaboration with government agency partners, funding field projects worldwide, conducting research ex-situ and in the field to add to understanding of species of conservation concern and improve husbandry techniques, and increasing public awareness regarding these efforts as well as the roles guests can play in supporting wildlife and wild places – this case study of the Phoenix Zoo provides an example of how modern zoos rise to the challenge and operate as true conservation organizations.

This chapter examines the political ecologies of wildlife conservation in London. The concerns with setting aside places for nature in the city are being supplanted by a desire to integrate ecological forms and processes as components of a connected urban ‘green infrastructure’. This includes novel forms of ecological engineering such as living walls and roofs, alongside the creation of ‘green grids’. There has also been a growing appreciation of the physical and mental health benefits of urban green space for citizens. However, the public discourse of social and ecological reconnection must be reconciled with changes in urban ecological governance. These include a decline in public control over planning and spending on restoration, and growing enthusiasm for both voluntary citizenship and public-private partnership.

This chapter focuses on the lessons that can be drawn from the case of salmon in wild rivers and grizzlies in Yellowstone National Park in terms of wildlife management and conservation of endangered species. It considers the reasons for counting wildlife as well as alternatives to restoring populations of endangered or threatened animals to their “once-was” abundance, along with the concept of minimum viable population size. It also looks at the insights provided by whooping cranes and the California condor as well as sea otters, sea urchins, and abalone for conserving and managing natural resources. Finally, it discusses wildlife conservation and management in the twenty-first century and suggests that they still mainly follow the old ways and old ideas about nature.

Zoo Renewal is not an attempt to explain away or fix that sinking feeling we might experience when looking at a living animal in its zoo enclosure; its tonalities may well exceed interpretation or remedy. But given the extreme presentism of zoos today combined with an environmental futurity that leans heavily on children, inquiring into the not-so-distant past and the urban specificity of bad zoo feelings is a necessary critical procedure. The question worth answering is not, as Berger might have posed it, why do people feel bad at the zoo, but what are the idioms and interactions through which feeling bad has been cultivated, amplified, relieved, and disavowed? The stories that follow reorient us in this direction and toward the analytic practices required for their telling.