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Tendencias en el Manejo de Vida Silvestre y la Aptitud del Entrenamiento en Universidades Australianas
Author(s) -
Baxter G. S.,
Hockings M.,
Carter R. W.,
Beeton R. J. S.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
conservation biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.2
H-Index - 222
eISSN - 1523-1739
pISSN - 0888-8892
DOI - 10.1046/j.1523-1739.1999.98274.x
Subject(s) - wildlife management , wildlife , syllabus , discipline , wildlife conservation , training (meteorology) , conservation biology , curriculum , environmental resource management , environmental planning , political science , public relations , geography , sociology , ecology , pedagogy , social science , environmental science , meteorology , biology
That the greatest challenges in conservation are often not technical but rather economic or sociological has been expressed for at least the last 20 years. This raises the question of whether the training offered to tomorrow's conservation practitioners prepares them sufficiently to deal with the human dimensions of conservation. We analyzed 747 papers from seven wildlife management 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, management‐oriented research, and discussion of economic and social factors relevant to management. We also examined the handbooks of 11 Australian universities to analyze the content of 439 compulsory subjects in 12 degrees that we judged 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, or planning. Thus, many of the skills required by contemporary wildlife managers must be learned in postgraduate training or on the job. Much of the undergraduate training syllabus, in Australia at least, does not reflect trends in the practice of wildlife management today and will not provide tomorrow's managers with the 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 curricula in human‐system management contained increased emphasis on socioeconomic issues relevant to management.