Refuge Notebook
Article
Dated
May 2, 2003
Refuge biologists discuss role of science in Alaska wildlife
management
by John Morton
Although the National Wildlife Refuge
System is celebrating its 100th birthday this year, you might be surprised to
learn that Wildlife Management was not really considered a science until as recently
as 1933. That was the year that Aldo Leopold, often considered the founding father
of wildlife ecology, published his cornerstone book Game Management. This landmark
work created a new science that intertwined forestry, agriculture, biology, zoology,
ecology, education and communication. Soon after its publication, the University
of Wisconsin created a new department of Game Management, and appointed Leopold
as its first chair.
From this start in the upper Midwest, Wildlife Management
as a profession has continued to evolve and mature. In a 1978 textbook, Dr. Bob
Giles defined Wildlife Management as the “science and art of making decisions
and taking actions to manipulate the structure, dynamics, and relations of populations,
habitats, and people to achieve specific human objectives by means of the wildlife
resource.”
Well, there certainly is art and a lot of politics in managing
wildlife, particularly on the Kenai, but that’s not the focus of this article.
We’ll save that for another day. It’s the science in Wildlife Management
that I’d like to discuss, and it’s something that continues to resonate
(as one biologist recently told me) in the wildlife profession. In 1981, in what
is now considered a an opening volley over the bow (so to speak), Dr. Charles
Romesburg published a paper in the Journal of Wildlife Management that called
for more and better science in the profession. He suggested that we do fewer observational
studies and more experimentally-based research.
In April, over 70 biologists
working on the 16 National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska got together for four days
at the Kenai Princess Lodge in Cooper Landing to talk about science. Dan Ashe,
the former director of the National Wildlife Refuge System and now the science
advisor to new director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, kicked off the
Refuge Biologist Conference by giving us the perspective from Washington, D.C.
He described the recommendations and products that several national teams are
developing on issues ranging from habitat monitoring protocols, to Geographic
Information Systems, to exotic and invasive species.
We had a lot of technical
presentations from a variety of scientifically-minded professionals. Sam Droege,
a monitoring expert from the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, shared
his rules-of-thumbs for improving our ability to detect changes in animal populations.
Other presenters discussed statistical techniques for classifying vegetation,
the geospatially-based Ver Hoef method for estimating moose populations, the use
of remote sensing data to monitor changes in vegetation and land use, and Web-based
approaches for database management.
We also discussed the need to monitor
the ecological effects of wild and prescribed fire in Alaska. Dr. Dave McGuire
from the Alaska Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit showed how moose
populations can respond positively to wildfire in interior Alaska as long as 30
years after a burn. We learned that several Refuges in the northeastern U.S. are
studying how varying the water drawdown in diked impoundments can provide foraging
habitat for migrating shorebirds in the spring, as well as for waterfowl in the
fall and winter. The message here was less about duck management, and more about
how Alaskan Refuges might be able to coordinate research and monitoring across
the state.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service is not the only Federal land
agency trying to get a better handle on scientific approaches to monitoring wildlife
and habitat. Sara Wesser described how the National Park Service has created a
series of networks across the US that allow for regional database management,
standardized monitoring protocols, and web-based information dissemination. Bea
VanHorne described how the U.S. Forest Service is implementing a pilot program
to monitor wildlife on permanent plots used for timber inventory. Carl Markon
from the U.S. Geological Survey reviewed progress on a comprehensive landcover
map of Alaska, based primarily on satellite imagery.
Now, some of these
topics may have been a little bit too technically-oriented for some folks, even
for number-crunching biologists. Sometimes the coffee just didn’t seem like
it had any kick to it. Fortunately, we were reminded why we all became wildlife
biologists with some great stories from Will Troyer and Jim King, two biologists
who retired from the USFWS. Will Troyer was one of the early managers at the Kenai
and Kodiak Refuges. He told us how he learned to drug bears so they could be ear-tagged,
including a deliberate poke in the bear’s rear-end to make sure it was actually
knocked out. One bear he poked turned out to be just sleeping on the riverbank,
and was not one of his study animals. It’s sometimes hard to figure out when
the old-timers are telling you a story and when they’re story telling!
Jim
King almost single-handedly developed modern aerial surveys for waterfowl, and
was one of the key players in identifying lands to be set aside as part of the
National Wildlife Refuge System in Alaska. Even though Jim denied that his talk
was to be inspirational, it very clearly served that purpose. I think most biologists
in that room, if they didn’t already have it, got a much better sense of
the living history and tradition of the Refuge System.
Although the purpose
of the conference was, in part, to improve the level of science currently being
done on Refuges, the outcome of Jim King’s talk was also to remind us that
there’s more to being a refuge biologist than technical know-how. There’s
a culture of passion for living things that is part of being a professional wildlife
biologist, and the feeling of satisfaction that comes from protecting and managing
these resources. However, in a world that is more litigation-minded, and with
a growing list of species vulnerable to extirpation, I think that wildlife biologists
need to package that enthusiasm with tighter science. We need scientifically grounded
data that are strong enough to stand up in court, as well as providing effective
guidance for long-term management of our wildlife and land resources.
John
Morton is the supervisory biologist at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.
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