Sustainable Wildlife Management and Conservation

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will comprise selected papers on Sustainable Wildlife Management and Conservation, inclusive of original research and reviews. The science of wildlife management continues to evolve and the definition of sustainable—which at one time pertained to yield management in terms of optimal sustainable harvest, based on population recruitment of a particular species, namely a game animal—today holds other import. While the earlier use of the term took into account biological and ecological factors, today it has broadened out of necessity to protect the environment, to encompass a wider range of constituents managed through environmental, economic and social policy objectives. Given the significance of conservation biology in today’s environment, one that is ever bombarded by anthropogenic disturbances, and the impressionable number of threatened wildlife species, sustainability for wildlife biologists, scientists, and managers today involves comprehension of an array of integral ecological components and the mechanisms by which they function cohesively and hierarchically to maintain an ecosystem intact, while keeping manipulation of natural resources to a minimum. Papers addressing sustainability from a panoptic perspective will be given priority. Some topics to cover, all in the context of sustainable wildlife management and conservation, might be: how to maintain environmental quality to satisfy habitat and nutritional requirements of the wildlife species of interest; to determine how much impact of human activities on macro- and micro-mineral cycles and on biodiversity, is justifiable; to provide examples of impact from invasive fauna and flora and wildlife poaching on the native wildlife species being managed; and results obtained after control of these impacts, to name a few. The role of adaptive management, as a means to adjust to new data incorporated into a model designed to achieve sustainable management, makes this a challenging field of science that will continue to grow; not to mention the challenges introduced by political, cultural and biophysical barriers, including the impending shortages of cheap energy, key elements, and funding sources. Contributing papers are encouraged to address their findings within the context of the projected 9 billion people, or more by 2050, and the continued failure to reach a steady-state human population. The objective of this Special Issue is to collectively bring under one umbrella the myriad components that interact in this diverse field of sustainable wildlife management and conservation as a means to help wildlife professionals decipher the factors that play an important role in the particular environment that they are managing.

Prof. Dr. Jo Anne Smith-Flueck
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.