Wildlife Conservation


moose with radio transmitter

Wildlife Management Tools

Habitat Inventory

Habitat mapping is an important tool for preserving wildlife habitat. Habitat maps indicate land ownership and how much habitat remains for different species in a given area. By looking at past trends and present land-use practices, wildlife managers can plan programs to preserve wildlife habitat for the future.

Habitat inventories are fairly easy to obtain. Wildlife managers can study aerial photos and get information from landowners and forest managers. They can also go into the field to study habitat.

Wildlife Inventory

It can be very difficult and expensive to determine how many animals live in an area. To make things even more complicated, wildlife managers also like to know the age and sex of the animals in the population. This helps them determine how healthy the population is.

Wildlife managers sometimes use aerial surveys. They fly over areas and do head counts of the animals. Managers can then estimate how many animals might exist in a larger area with similar habitat. Many times, animals are tagged with radio collars or I.D. tags and monitored to study their movements.