Our Wildlife Management course is designed for those who wish to work to conserve wildlife whether it\'s in the wild, in zoos or working with captive breeding programs.

Wildlife management is the manipulation of wild animal populations and their habitats for the benefit of both humans and wildlife. Wildlife management includes running parks and reserves, altering and rehabilitating wildlife habitats, pest control, protecting human life and property and managing harvests of wildlife.

Controlling populations of wildlife may take one of the following forms:

• Managing wildlife habitats
• Managing people
• Managing individual animals in populations to either change or cause a population to remain constant.

The techniques and types of wildlife management vary depending on your location, and as with any job, you will find that you will need to carry out research into the local methods and types of wildlife management. This course is designed to give students a broad based introduction to the principles and practices of wildlife management common to many species around the globe.

There are 9 lessons in this course:

1. Introduction to Wildlife Management
2. Wildlife Habitats
3. Wildlife Ecology
4. Population Dynamics
5. Carrying Capacity
6. Wildlife Censuses
7. Wildlife Management Techniques
8. Wildlife Management Law and Administration
9. Wildlife Management Case Study Research Project

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school\'s tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

• Develop a concept of how man manages wildlife populations in different situations around the world.
• Understand and discuss the principles of wildlife ecology.
• Understand wildlife habitats and their importance to managing wildlife.
• Explain how populations of any one species change and adapt to variations in their environment.
• Understand carrying capacity and its importance in managing wildlife populations.
• Explain a range of different methods used to determine the number of individuals in a wildlife population.
• Discuss a range of different wildlife management techniques.
• Explain the potentials and limitations of legal and administrative initiatives, in the pursuance of more effective wildlife management.
• Examine a specific wildlife management case of interest to the student.

• Contact (either in person, email or by telephone) an organisation involved in wildlife management such as a National Park, wildlife reserve, zoo, etc to research their wildlife management program.
• In your locality, find out about one pest species of wildlife and one endangered or threatened species of native wildlife. Research what happened to make these animals pests or endangered.
• Visit a natural area in your locality and observe the organisms in the area and their interactions with each other and the environment.
• Explain what trophic levels are and how energy flows between them.
• Define habitat, biome, vegetation formation and feeding radius.
• Visit a zoo, wildlife park, game reserve, pet shop, fauna sanctuary or other place where wild animals are kept in captivity to observe the animals in their captive surroundings and compare these with their native surroundings.
• Identify a predator-prey relationship between two species in a local ecosystem and make predictions about changes to this relationship.
• Research the difference between r and K strategists in animals.