The evolution of wilderness wildlife research in North America.

Most wildlife research in North America has focused on a standard suite of questions, asked of a limited assemblage of economically important species and studied using a relatively limited set of techniques, study site characteristics and narrow time-frames. We describe why these factors are not necessarily conducive to conducting wildlife research in wilderness settings. As a consequence, the amount of wildlife research conducted in wilderness settings has historically been small and limited primarily to wilderness-dependent species. We further describe the reasons for this, recent trends and the types of wildlife research questions that can best be addressed in wilderness settings. Humans, as we define the species, have lived in intimate association with other animals for at least the past 200,000 years, serving as both predator and prey. For all but a small part of this time, they lived in what contemporary terms would call a wilderness environment. The constant interactions with animals, as predators and prey, forced the human species to become knowledgeable about attributes of animal biology and behavior. Knowledge was accumulated and passed down to succeeding generations. Learning the habits of the large game animals and carnivores was probably a true trial and error process. Natural selection played an important role since the trials were often life-threatening and the errors often fatal (Shepard 1973). Human knowledge of animal behavior and the efficiency of methods to harvest wild animals continued to increase with the size of human populations. As a result, by the dawn of what is usually recognized as civilized culture—ca 5,000 7,000 years ago in southern Europe and the Mideast but much later in North America—many of the larger game species had been driven to extinction or were greatly diminished in abundance (Fagan 1989). When and where this occurred, human populations were forced to cease their nomadic ways and develop an agricultural lifestyle that relied on crops and recently domesticated animals. With this shift in lifestyle, the first permanent communities appeared (Gray 1993). As a consequence, the “wilderness quality” of the living environment diminished. One consequence of permanent settlement in ever larger communities was that innate knowledge of the ways of wild animals essential for human survival over the eons but never recorded became less important and was gradually lost (Shepard 1973). The more civilized Western society became, the more isolated the average person was from wild animals; by the 1600s, western European urban populations had little chance of encountering wild animals, and they could no longer be assured of even eating meat from any source. With the later gradual evolution of a privileged/leisure class in society in the 18th and 19th centuries, interest in the natural history and taxonomic classification of wild animals increased. This interest was spawned in part by the global expeditions of explorers which awakened the Western world to the diversity of life on the planet (Borland 1975). The Evolution of Wildlife Research in North America ________________ Despite the long history of human involvement with wildlife, it was still not until the early 1900s that an interest in the actual study of wildlife began to blossom in North America. The American Game Protective and Propagation Association, a group largely made up of sportsmen, conservationists and sporting arms industry representatives that supported the conservation of game through laws and breeding programs, was instrumental in this effort (Greeley 1931). Initial studies were largely descriptive, based primarily on experience or opinion, lacking data and facts and essentially weak in scientific rigor. This was largely because investigations into the habits of wild animals were typically motivated and supported by various special interest groups. For example, state game departments were primarily interested in satisfying the demands of those who paid for hunting licenses, while universities and federal departments focused on the problems of poultry and livestock to the exclusion of wild bird and animals (Allen 1932). However, through the discussions and papers presented at the annual American Game Conferences in the early 1900s and continuing in 1936 with its successor, the North American Wildlife Conference, the character of wildlife studies slowly began to change. Although revolutionary at the time, the idea that scientific research was important and could enhance the management of wildlife slowly became accepted and was formally adopted in the American Game Policy of 1930 (Leopold 1930). Beginning in 1935, Cooperative Wildlife Research Units were established at U.S. land grant universities to educate wildlife biologists, conduct research and better integrate state, federal and university