Trends in wildlife management and the appropriateness of Australian university training

That the greatest challenges in conservation are often not technical but ra ther economic or sociological has been expressed for at least the last 20 y ears This raises the question of whether the training offered to tomorrow's observation practitioners prepares them sufficiently, to deal with the hum an dimensions of conservation. We analyzed 747 papers from seven wildlife m anagement and conservation biology journals to determine the trends in this area of conservation management between 1985 and 1995. We found that over that time the emphasis stayed on single-species issues with a science focus , but there was a marked shift toward conservation biology issues, manageme nt-oriented research and discussion of economic and social-factors relevant to management. We also examined the handbooks of 11 Australian universitie s to analyze the content of 439 compulsory subjects in 12 degrees that we j udged could produce wildlife managers. More than 68% of subjects were from a basic science or technology discipline, 16% from resource management, and only 13% from economics, humanities, communications, of planning. Thus, ma ny, of the skills required by contemporary wildlife managers must be learne d in postgraduate training or on the job, Much of the undergraduate trainin g syllabus, in Australia at least does not reflect trends in the practice o f wildlife management today and will not provide tomorrow's managers with t he range of disciplinary understanding required. We were able, however, to identify three types of undergraduate training-ecological system managers, environmental managers and human system managers-and we found that the curr icula in human-system management contained increased emphasis on socioecono mic issues relevant to management.