There are several lessons from these stories of species recovery. Most of these management techniques are site and situation specific, not conducive to administration by a central state or federal bureaucracy. Wildlife biologists can easily tell whether their techniques actually benefit the species they are trying to help. If not, they try something else. A second lesson is that ranchers, farmers, outdoor sportsmen, and others from the private sector play an important role in effective wildlife policies, sometimes on their own, sometimes in association with government wildlife authorities.
Sportsmen naturally have an incentive to care for and expand the species they like to hunt and fish.
Increasingly, property owners are discovering the attractions of enhancing habitat on their lands, either for their own enjoyment or for the hunting income offered by rich and diverse animal populations. Perhaps the most important lesson is that nature itself is dynamic and resilient. Natural forces, of course, are the cause of the majority of extinctions. Other species have been devastated by human action, such as encroachments on habitat and over-hunting. The passenger pigeon and the Carolina parakeet are among the most prominent man-caused extinctions on the American continent.