Mistrust in Wildlife Management
One of the most interesting dynamics I witness as a hunting and fishing biologist is the animosity between sportspeople and the entire wildlife management complex, including wildlife biologists, agency personnel, and entire regulatory agencies. As a hunter, I regularly find myself in situations where I interact with other hunters that have no idea what I do professionally. What is possibly most interesting to me is how little it takes to get a sportsperson riled up about wildlife management. If you have spent any time with hunters or anglers, you have also heard some version of: “the [insert your state here] Game and Fish has no idea what they are talking about” or “[insert your least favorite regulation here] is going to destroy hunting in this state”. Conversely, in my professional life, it is not uncommon to hear animosity directed toward the hunting and fishing community. I suppose it isn’t too surprising that ecologists, who are rarely hunters and anglers, would occasionally hold such an opinion, but it is surprisingly common from hook-and-bullet biologists as well.
At the heart of this dynamic is a difference between the level of trust wildlife professionals feel they deserve and the level of trust the general public often has in those professionals. I can understand the reasoning from those on both sides of this divide and believe that neither side is completely right. There are numerous other forums for discussing how this divide needs to be addressed among the scientific community[1], so I’ll only mention one place where wildlife professionals need to do a better job near the end of the page. Instead, I’ll first focus on making the case that you as a member of the general public should probably trust the community of scientists and wildlife professionals more than you do. Then, I’ll tell you why that trust should not be absolute, and it may not be the reason you expect.
Mistrust of wildlife professionals and agency personnel is only one example of a larger trend in our society. Mistrust of science and scientists is at an all-time high, and long gone are the days when scientists were universally recognized as the experts in their fields. It is now considered acceptable, and even respectable to question experts, regardless of your level of knowledge on a subject. If you have a Facebook or Twitter account, you see this every day. The COVID-19 pandemic has only amplified this reality. There are real world implications to this newfound questioning of authority, some of them good, and some of them worrisome.
The reasons for a growing mistrust in what wildlife biologists and wildlife managers do are varied. Some of this mistrust may be cultural. Some may be related to real or perceived unfairness in the decisions rendered by management agencies. Some may stem from a general lack of understanding about how science works and what it hopes to accomplish. Cultural mistrust, passed down from father to daughter, will be difficult to change in a meaningful way. Such mistrust seems to go hand-in-hand with a hunter-centric conservation ethic. If your reason to be in the outdoors is to hunt and only to hunt, anything that limits those opportunities will breed contempt. I find it difficult to see how wildlife biologists and managers can change these opinions.
Other factors leading to distrust might be addressable. Sportspeople often develop a mistrust in how management agencies operate, even if they accept that populations of most game species are robust and thus indicative of generally good management. These mistrusts can manifest in several ways. One common complaint among sportspeople is that they don’t have a say in management decisions. Hunters might think they have a good feel for year-to-year changes in the number of ducks or pheasants they see in the field and thus have a valuable opinion on whether bag limits are too high or too low. Hunters tend to have higher levels of trust in a management agency when they feel their voice is heard about those decisions like bag limits.
Another common reason for distrust in a management agency stems from perceptions of inequities among how hunting regulations are applied[2]. Every hunter wants to feel they have the same opportunities to successfully bag game as every other hunter. Mistrust in a management agency can stem from a perception that some hunters are getting more than their fair share of the resource. If a hunter is unsuccessful, they sometimes attribute their lack of success to regulations that allow other hunters to overharvest game. Management agencies can alleviate some of these problems by being more transparent about how hunting opportunities are spread among hunters. In a tangible example, states that use a lottery system to allocate permit winners could be more straightforward about how the process unfolds. Televising a 1990s-style lottery draw with ping-pong balls in a tumbler is probably unnecessary, but there are worse ways to allocate permits.
Mistrust can also stem from perceptions of technical competence of the management agency. In short, hunters often think the science behind decisions isn’t good. Science is an incredibly powerful process that has proven time and again to be the best source we have for gaining knowledge of the natural world. Science isn’t perfect, and no scientist would claim it is. There is bad science, and there are unsavory characters in the field of wildlife biology. However, one of the beautiful things about science is that is largely self-correcting and generally gets us closer to a true understanding of the natural world over time.
Now here’s my argument as to why you should trust scientists and management personnel more than you likely do. As knowledgeable as you might be about a species for which you hunt or fish, I promise you that a biologist working with that species knows more than you. They have literally made it their life’s work to make sure they do. Unfortunately, an expert isn’t where most sportspeople get their information about the natural world. Instead, it most likely comes from outdoor magazines and websites, some of which are better than others. The most knowledgeable guides or TV hosts may have detailed knowledge of the when and where to find the species you are pursuing. Even an early career biologist, say a master’s student working on that species, will be knowledgeable on that species’ habitat use, in addition to its population dynamics, reproductive system, competitive interactions, physiology, role in ecosystem functioning, and many other things.
The interesting thing about these two groups is that the hunting guide or TV host will spout their expertise to anyone who listen. Their livelihood depends on it. The biologist, even after a lifetime of working with the species, will list off five or ten things we don’t know about the species before they will tell you what they we have learned through decades of careful study. There is an interesting theory in psychology that purports explain this dynamic: the Dunning-Kruger Effect[3]. Briefly, it states that folks with a little bit of knowledge about a subject tend to vastly overestimate their expertise. As you continue to learn about that subject, however, your confidence in your knowledge decreases as you begin to learn how insignificant your knowledge base is relative to the collective knowledge on the subject. Eventually, with continued experience and education, your confidence will creep back up, but rarely will it reach the levels of your early days discovering a subject.
This mistrust in management agencies has real world implications for conservation and management of our natural resources. A prime example occurred in Michigan in 2018. The Michigan Natural Resources Commission put a ban on deer baiting to stem the spread of chronic wasting disease. The scientific community is frantically trying to determine the effects of baiting on disease transmission, but the best available evidence suggests baiting increases deer congregations and could lead to increased spread of CWD[4]. Instead of waiting for the science on the topic to develop or funding the necessary research to get better answers, the Michigan legislature passed a repeal on the ban in 2019, based in part on the expert testimony of none other than Ted Nugent. To put this another way, the Michigan legislature ignored the suggestions of experts who understand this topic better than anyone in favor of the suggestions of the prototypical “big talker” in wildlife management. Might we find out that baiting plays no role in the spread of chronic wasting disease? Of course, and hopefully we do. In the meantime, the biologists in the state chose the more conservative course of action supported by evidence because it can be reversed if we find out baiting doesn’t matter. The same cannot be said for the course of action adopted by the Michigan legislature.
In addition to miscalibrations of knowledge, there are also more basal concerns with gaining knowledge about the natural world from subjective sources like TV hosts or guides. Scientific giants like Galileo (1564-1642) and Isaac Newton (1642-1727) recognized centuries ago that human perception is fatally flawed. They and other contemporary scientific philosophers developed the world-changing concept that experimentation and quantification of the results of those experiments were necessary to remove the flaws of human perception from our understanding of any natural phenomenon. As much as you think you can trust your memory and experiences, we have ample evidence that you can’t. It’s very hard to convince yourself this is true, but it is. Further, the human brain is wired to find patterns, even if they don’t exist. One of the real strengths of science is that you don’t have to trust your perceptions, and you don’t have to worry about whether a pattern is real or only imagined. Scientists collect quantitative data that are recorded and analyzed with statistical methods that are designed to take subjective assessments out of the equation[a]. This is an important, fundamental distinction between the knowledge a hunting guide might have and the knowledge a biologist will have.
So, what does all this philosophical discussion mean for how much trust you should put in your friendly local wildlife biologist? It means that they probably have information that not only do you not have, but you likely don’t even know exists. That said, biologists, land managers, and agency personnel are humans as well, and humans don’t always make the most logical decision. There will also always be pressures beyond the control of management agencies that necessarily play a role in management actions. Let me assure you, however, that apart from a small number of regulatory decisions made for political or societal reasons, most regulatory decisions are based on the best science available and quantitative evaluations of years of data. It is a misconception to think otherwise.
● ● ●
Mistrust in wildlife management cannot and should not be blamed completely on the public. Some of the reasons are obvious. Wildlife biologists and wildlife managers are humans and sometimes fold under political pressures more easily than the public would like or act in unscrupulous ways that engender mistrust. Research scientists, including wildlife biologists, also often act in ways that reinforce the stereotype of the out-of-touch scientist in the ivory tower, putting distance between themselves and the public. I’m more interested here in a less obvious reason why wildlife managers and biologists can breed mistrust and why the field of wildlife biology might be more fallible than we like to believe it is.
It should come as no surprise that many wildlife biologists and other wildlife professionals discovered their love of nature following a bird dog across the prairie or sitting on a dock waiting for a bluegill to dunk their bobber. I am no different in this regard, and I’m constantly reminded how my career and my hobby can intertwine. My Dad and I were recently in the stunning Valentine National Wildlife Refuge in the Sandhill region of Nebraska in the pursuit of sharp-tailed grouse[b]. After several days of very hard hunting and very little luck, Dad asked me why I didn’t try to get funding to do a study there so I would know where the birds were. It was an offhanded and not particularly serious question, not unlike any of the normal banter between hunting partners or fathers and sons more generally. However, it led to an interesting discussion about why I never have, and I never will, research a species which I might hunt. It all comes down to an ethical decision I made relatively early in my scientific career.
Ethics and scientific integrity must necessarily be considered by all scientists and wildlife biologists, and it is unlikely that any professional is completely free from all conflicts of interest in their research or management duties[5]. One such conflict of interest might arise when a researcher or manager is an active hunter or angler and their study species and quarry are the same. This duality may lead to unique questions in ethics and scientific integrity that other researchers and resource managers do not face. I have no concrete evidence there are widespread concerns in this regard, but I do think anyone in this situation should at least recognize the ethical considerations in both pursuing their study species and researching or managing a species they hunt, trap, or fish. Because I can never know the intentions of all wildlife professionals who do pursue their study species, I refuse to make any subjective judgments about the ethics of the hunting or fishing biologist. Thus, what follows is simply a description of the ethical decision I have made during my research career and is not meant to project on all biologists.
Conflicts of interest can affect a wildlife biologist during their recreational time and vice versa. Some members of the public and some practicing wildlife professionals may consider it unethical for a wildlife biologist to pursue the focal species of their research or management duties for sport because they might have information unavailable (or at least not widely known) to the average sportsperson. For example, wildlife professionals will have an unparalleled level of insight into where game species are likely to be, how they move in the habitat, and how many are in the area. While concern that a biologist has an unfair advantage in pursuing their game of choice should not be dismissed out of hand, it would seem an extreme case where this would impose ethical concerns beyond those faced by any hunter. There is potential for information gained through research or management activities to be used to facilitate recreational harvest, which would clearly be unsporting. This could occur if, for example, a researcher was using radiotelemetry to track movements in a population of deer and using those data to increase their hunting success. I’ve never heard of a biologist doing this, and I suspect that most would be appalled by such behavior and would therefore expect such instances to be exceedingly rare.
While most wildlife professionals will likely have little trouble avoiding ethical issues associated with pursuing a species they research or manage, the inverse might be a minefield of ethical issues. A sportsperson likely hopes their quarry are plentiful, large or mature (especially in the case of trophy hunting), and/or that regulations allow for substantial opportunities to pursue the quarry. Conversely, wildlife managers and other agency personnel tasked with managing a species should also consider the best interest of the species as well. A wildlife biologist view data objectively with no predetermined interests in how the data are ultimately interpreted or used.
All scientists are likely faced with research situations where individual experiences and beliefs may be viewed as a conflict of interest. For example, a biomedical researcher might have personal interest in a new treatment they are developing if they or a loved one is diagnosed with the disease that treatment is meant to address. Even ecologists working on non-game species are often faced with situations where personal interest in their study species must be recognized. This does not mean the biomedical researcher or non-game ecologist cannot be effective as scientists, but they might be predisposed, either consciously or subconsciously, to interpret data in a favorable way for non-scientific reasons. Wildlife biologists who research a species they hunt or fish are no different in this regard, and the potential conflict of interest should be acknowledged and considered like any other conflict.
It is impossible to cover every conflict a wildlife professional might encounter when researching or managing a species they pursue for sport, and doing so would be counterproductive to the larger point I hope to make. A few obvious examples do merit mention, however. First is a potential bias to make management decisions or interpret data in a manner that wrongly or unjustifiably supports increased hunting opportunities or biases management towards a particular age or size class. Such a bias could take many forms. For example, a wildlife biologist working on a manuscript on the demography[c] of a game species could focus on demographic parameters indicative of stable or growing populations while minimizing discussion of parameters suggesting population decline or instability. There is nothing inherently unethical about this practice as all scientists make decisions about the story they tell in every paper they write. However, if such decisions are unduly influenced by a desire to support hunting opportunities, it might be problematic. I suspect such a bias may be exacerbated if other project stakeholders, like the funding agency or management personnel interpreting the results, are non-neutral to the results and also have a stake in the outcome.
A second, and in my opinion more dangerous, conflict of interest might occur when wildlife professionals conduct research or use their position as a manager to directly promote management practices positively affecting them as sportspeople. Two ideas I’ve discussed in detail exemplify the potential for such a conflict: the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation and compensatory mortality. There is a potential conflict of interest, whether real or perceived, that might arise from researching or vocally supporting management schemes which benefit the researcher or manager through increased sporting opportunities. At the very least, a wildlife professional promoting a management scheme from which they personally benefit leads to poor optics and may raise questions about the underlying science and management decisions. Members of the general public should not hesitate to (respectfully) raise questions about these potential conflicts at stakeholder meetings and when given the opportunity to comment on regulatory decisions regarding wildlife in which they find an interest.
This is the only place I will directly address my fellow biologists in this book, and it is to say this: the scientific community needs to take an active role in policing these conflicts of interest. There is nothing inherently unethical about a biologist researching a species they pursue for sport. Scientists do their best work when researching topics in which they are interested; wildlife biologists are not, and should not be, different in this regard. Biologists in this position should however recognize the potential conflict of interest, do what they can to minimize resulting biases, and be open and transparent about them while interacting with stakeholders. Some steps toward minimizing conflicts are small: biologists can faithfully present all data, both positive and negative, to allow readers and managers to draw their own conclusions. Other feasible steps will require more concerted effort, and will likely require coordination between researchers, journals, management agencies, and funding sources. Researchers who actively pursue their study species might involve colleagues with no such conflict of interest. Likewise, pursuing funding from sources with no stake in the results may lessen conflicts for at least some projects where the researcher pursues their study species.
Scientific journals should also play an active role by explicitly detailing these practices as a conflict of interest that should be reported when submitting a manuscript. A simple inclusion of a conflict-of-interest statement like those seen in medical journals would greatly strengthen the public’s trust in scientific literature on wildlife management. Conflict statements are becoming more common in ecology journals, but we are still waiting for any of the major wildlife management journals to follow suit. It is unfortunately not uncommon to find propaganda, especially for the North American Model, masquerading as scientific literature. Readers should be aware if an author has financial or other interests in, for example, a pro-hunting organization when reading a paper promoting the conservation benefits of hunting. These and other steps should be discussed by the relevant scientific communities to decide which are most appropriate; some or all may be rejected. The goal should always be to ensure the best science is used in management of populations of game species. This includes frank and open discussions of possible conflicts of interest that might jeopardize the integrity of our field.
[a] This is the idealistic view of statistics…a good statistician can manipulate data in amazing ways, but it’s the goal of the peer-review process at scientific journals to minimize such shenanigans. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s not bad.
[b] Valentine NWR is a sea of grassy dunes for as far as the eye can see. I fell in love with similar habitats during my time in South Africa, and Valentine definitely fits my eye. If you like chasing upland birds, this is a must-hunt location, but don’t go there expecting an easy hunt.
[c] Demography is the study of how a population increases and decreases, focusing on things like birth, death, immigration, and emigration rates.
Chapter 12: Mistrust
[1] Marc J. Stern and Kimberly J. Coleman, "The Multidimensionality of Trust: Applications in Collaborative Natural Resource Management," Society & Natural Resources 28, no. 2 (2015).
[2] Shawn J. Riley et al., "Stakeholder Trust in a State Wildlife Agency," The Journal of Wildlife Management 82, no. 7 (2018).
[3] Justin Kruger and David Dunning, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments," Journal of personality and social psychology 77, no. 6 (1999).
[4] Anja Sorensen, Floris M. van Beest, and Ryan K. Brook, "Impacts of Wildlife Baiting and Supplemental Feeding on Infectious Disease Transmission Risk: A Synthesis of Knowledge," Preventive Veterinary Medicine 113, no. 4 (2014).
[5] Ben A Minteer and James P Collins, "From Environmental to Ecological Ethics: Toward a Practical Ethics for Ecologists and Conservationists," Science and Engineering Ethics 14, no. 4 (2008).
At the heart of this dynamic is a difference between the level of trust wildlife professionals feel they deserve and the level of trust the general public often has in those professionals. I can understand the reasoning from those on both sides of this divide and believe that neither side is completely right. There are numerous other forums for discussing how this divide needs to be addressed among the scientific community[1], so I’ll only mention one place where wildlife professionals need to do a better job near the end of the page. Instead, I’ll first focus on making the case that you as a member of the general public should probably trust the community of scientists and wildlife professionals more than you do. Then, I’ll tell you why that trust should not be absolute, and it may not be the reason you expect.
Mistrust of wildlife professionals and agency personnel is only one example of a larger trend in our society. Mistrust of science and scientists is at an all-time high, and long gone are the days when scientists were universally recognized as the experts in their fields. It is now considered acceptable, and even respectable to question experts, regardless of your level of knowledge on a subject. If you have a Facebook or Twitter account, you see this every day. The COVID-19 pandemic has only amplified this reality. There are real world implications to this newfound questioning of authority, some of them good, and some of them worrisome.
The reasons for a growing mistrust in what wildlife biologists and wildlife managers do are varied. Some of this mistrust may be cultural. Some may be related to real or perceived unfairness in the decisions rendered by management agencies. Some may stem from a general lack of understanding about how science works and what it hopes to accomplish. Cultural mistrust, passed down from father to daughter, will be difficult to change in a meaningful way. Such mistrust seems to go hand-in-hand with a hunter-centric conservation ethic. If your reason to be in the outdoors is to hunt and only to hunt, anything that limits those opportunities will breed contempt. I find it difficult to see how wildlife biologists and managers can change these opinions.
Other factors leading to distrust might be addressable. Sportspeople often develop a mistrust in how management agencies operate, even if they accept that populations of most game species are robust and thus indicative of generally good management. These mistrusts can manifest in several ways. One common complaint among sportspeople is that they don’t have a say in management decisions. Hunters might think they have a good feel for year-to-year changes in the number of ducks or pheasants they see in the field and thus have a valuable opinion on whether bag limits are too high or too low. Hunters tend to have higher levels of trust in a management agency when they feel their voice is heard about those decisions like bag limits.
Another common reason for distrust in a management agency stems from perceptions of inequities among how hunting regulations are applied[2]. Every hunter wants to feel they have the same opportunities to successfully bag game as every other hunter. Mistrust in a management agency can stem from a perception that some hunters are getting more than their fair share of the resource. If a hunter is unsuccessful, they sometimes attribute their lack of success to regulations that allow other hunters to overharvest game. Management agencies can alleviate some of these problems by being more transparent about how hunting opportunities are spread among hunters. In a tangible example, states that use a lottery system to allocate permit winners could be more straightforward about how the process unfolds. Televising a 1990s-style lottery draw with ping-pong balls in a tumbler is probably unnecessary, but there are worse ways to allocate permits.
Mistrust can also stem from perceptions of technical competence of the management agency. In short, hunters often think the science behind decisions isn’t good. Science is an incredibly powerful process that has proven time and again to be the best source we have for gaining knowledge of the natural world. Science isn’t perfect, and no scientist would claim it is. There is bad science, and there are unsavory characters in the field of wildlife biology. However, one of the beautiful things about science is that is largely self-correcting and generally gets us closer to a true understanding of the natural world over time.
Now here’s my argument as to why you should trust scientists and management personnel more than you likely do. As knowledgeable as you might be about a species for which you hunt or fish, I promise you that a biologist working with that species knows more than you. They have literally made it their life’s work to make sure they do. Unfortunately, an expert isn’t where most sportspeople get their information about the natural world. Instead, it most likely comes from outdoor magazines and websites, some of which are better than others. The most knowledgeable guides or TV hosts may have detailed knowledge of the when and where to find the species you are pursuing. Even an early career biologist, say a master’s student working on that species, will be knowledgeable on that species’ habitat use, in addition to its population dynamics, reproductive system, competitive interactions, physiology, role in ecosystem functioning, and many other things.
The interesting thing about these two groups is that the hunting guide or TV host will spout their expertise to anyone who listen. Their livelihood depends on it. The biologist, even after a lifetime of working with the species, will list off five or ten things we don’t know about the species before they will tell you what they we have learned through decades of careful study. There is an interesting theory in psychology that purports explain this dynamic: the Dunning-Kruger Effect[3]. Briefly, it states that folks with a little bit of knowledge about a subject tend to vastly overestimate their expertise. As you continue to learn about that subject, however, your confidence in your knowledge decreases as you begin to learn how insignificant your knowledge base is relative to the collective knowledge on the subject. Eventually, with continued experience and education, your confidence will creep back up, but rarely will it reach the levels of your early days discovering a subject.
This mistrust in management agencies has real world implications for conservation and management of our natural resources. A prime example occurred in Michigan in 2018. The Michigan Natural Resources Commission put a ban on deer baiting to stem the spread of chronic wasting disease. The scientific community is frantically trying to determine the effects of baiting on disease transmission, but the best available evidence suggests baiting increases deer congregations and could lead to increased spread of CWD[4]. Instead of waiting for the science on the topic to develop or funding the necessary research to get better answers, the Michigan legislature passed a repeal on the ban in 2019, based in part on the expert testimony of none other than Ted Nugent. To put this another way, the Michigan legislature ignored the suggestions of experts who understand this topic better than anyone in favor of the suggestions of the prototypical “big talker” in wildlife management. Might we find out that baiting plays no role in the spread of chronic wasting disease? Of course, and hopefully we do. In the meantime, the biologists in the state chose the more conservative course of action supported by evidence because it can be reversed if we find out baiting doesn’t matter. The same cannot be said for the course of action adopted by the Michigan legislature.
In addition to miscalibrations of knowledge, there are also more basal concerns with gaining knowledge about the natural world from subjective sources like TV hosts or guides. Scientific giants like Galileo (1564-1642) and Isaac Newton (1642-1727) recognized centuries ago that human perception is fatally flawed. They and other contemporary scientific philosophers developed the world-changing concept that experimentation and quantification of the results of those experiments were necessary to remove the flaws of human perception from our understanding of any natural phenomenon. As much as you think you can trust your memory and experiences, we have ample evidence that you can’t. It’s very hard to convince yourself this is true, but it is. Further, the human brain is wired to find patterns, even if they don’t exist. One of the real strengths of science is that you don’t have to trust your perceptions, and you don’t have to worry about whether a pattern is real or only imagined. Scientists collect quantitative data that are recorded and analyzed with statistical methods that are designed to take subjective assessments out of the equation[a]. This is an important, fundamental distinction between the knowledge a hunting guide might have and the knowledge a biologist will have.
So, what does all this philosophical discussion mean for how much trust you should put in your friendly local wildlife biologist? It means that they probably have information that not only do you not have, but you likely don’t even know exists. That said, biologists, land managers, and agency personnel are humans as well, and humans don’t always make the most logical decision. There will also always be pressures beyond the control of management agencies that necessarily play a role in management actions. Let me assure you, however, that apart from a small number of regulatory decisions made for political or societal reasons, most regulatory decisions are based on the best science available and quantitative evaluations of years of data. It is a misconception to think otherwise.
● ● ●
Mistrust in wildlife management cannot and should not be blamed completely on the public. Some of the reasons are obvious. Wildlife biologists and wildlife managers are humans and sometimes fold under political pressures more easily than the public would like or act in unscrupulous ways that engender mistrust. Research scientists, including wildlife biologists, also often act in ways that reinforce the stereotype of the out-of-touch scientist in the ivory tower, putting distance between themselves and the public. I’m more interested here in a less obvious reason why wildlife managers and biologists can breed mistrust and why the field of wildlife biology might be more fallible than we like to believe it is.
It should come as no surprise that many wildlife biologists and other wildlife professionals discovered their love of nature following a bird dog across the prairie or sitting on a dock waiting for a bluegill to dunk their bobber. I am no different in this regard, and I’m constantly reminded how my career and my hobby can intertwine. My Dad and I were recently in the stunning Valentine National Wildlife Refuge in the Sandhill region of Nebraska in the pursuit of sharp-tailed grouse[b]. After several days of very hard hunting and very little luck, Dad asked me why I didn’t try to get funding to do a study there so I would know where the birds were. It was an offhanded and not particularly serious question, not unlike any of the normal banter between hunting partners or fathers and sons more generally. However, it led to an interesting discussion about why I never have, and I never will, research a species which I might hunt. It all comes down to an ethical decision I made relatively early in my scientific career.
Ethics and scientific integrity must necessarily be considered by all scientists and wildlife biologists, and it is unlikely that any professional is completely free from all conflicts of interest in their research or management duties[5]. One such conflict of interest might arise when a researcher or manager is an active hunter or angler and their study species and quarry are the same. This duality may lead to unique questions in ethics and scientific integrity that other researchers and resource managers do not face. I have no concrete evidence there are widespread concerns in this regard, but I do think anyone in this situation should at least recognize the ethical considerations in both pursuing their study species and researching or managing a species they hunt, trap, or fish. Because I can never know the intentions of all wildlife professionals who do pursue their study species, I refuse to make any subjective judgments about the ethics of the hunting or fishing biologist. Thus, what follows is simply a description of the ethical decision I have made during my research career and is not meant to project on all biologists.
Conflicts of interest can affect a wildlife biologist during their recreational time and vice versa. Some members of the public and some practicing wildlife professionals may consider it unethical for a wildlife biologist to pursue the focal species of their research or management duties for sport because they might have information unavailable (or at least not widely known) to the average sportsperson. For example, wildlife professionals will have an unparalleled level of insight into where game species are likely to be, how they move in the habitat, and how many are in the area. While concern that a biologist has an unfair advantage in pursuing their game of choice should not be dismissed out of hand, it would seem an extreme case where this would impose ethical concerns beyond those faced by any hunter. There is potential for information gained through research or management activities to be used to facilitate recreational harvest, which would clearly be unsporting. This could occur if, for example, a researcher was using radiotelemetry to track movements in a population of deer and using those data to increase their hunting success. I’ve never heard of a biologist doing this, and I suspect that most would be appalled by such behavior and would therefore expect such instances to be exceedingly rare.
While most wildlife professionals will likely have little trouble avoiding ethical issues associated with pursuing a species they research or manage, the inverse might be a minefield of ethical issues. A sportsperson likely hopes their quarry are plentiful, large or mature (especially in the case of trophy hunting), and/or that regulations allow for substantial opportunities to pursue the quarry. Conversely, wildlife managers and other agency personnel tasked with managing a species should also consider the best interest of the species as well. A wildlife biologist view data objectively with no predetermined interests in how the data are ultimately interpreted or used.
All scientists are likely faced with research situations where individual experiences and beliefs may be viewed as a conflict of interest. For example, a biomedical researcher might have personal interest in a new treatment they are developing if they or a loved one is diagnosed with the disease that treatment is meant to address. Even ecologists working on non-game species are often faced with situations where personal interest in their study species must be recognized. This does not mean the biomedical researcher or non-game ecologist cannot be effective as scientists, but they might be predisposed, either consciously or subconsciously, to interpret data in a favorable way for non-scientific reasons. Wildlife biologists who research a species they hunt or fish are no different in this regard, and the potential conflict of interest should be acknowledged and considered like any other conflict.
It is impossible to cover every conflict a wildlife professional might encounter when researching or managing a species they pursue for sport, and doing so would be counterproductive to the larger point I hope to make. A few obvious examples do merit mention, however. First is a potential bias to make management decisions or interpret data in a manner that wrongly or unjustifiably supports increased hunting opportunities or biases management towards a particular age or size class. Such a bias could take many forms. For example, a wildlife biologist working on a manuscript on the demography[c] of a game species could focus on demographic parameters indicative of stable or growing populations while minimizing discussion of parameters suggesting population decline or instability. There is nothing inherently unethical about this practice as all scientists make decisions about the story they tell in every paper they write. However, if such decisions are unduly influenced by a desire to support hunting opportunities, it might be problematic. I suspect such a bias may be exacerbated if other project stakeholders, like the funding agency or management personnel interpreting the results, are non-neutral to the results and also have a stake in the outcome.
A second, and in my opinion more dangerous, conflict of interest might occur when wildlife professionals conduct research or use their position as a manager to directly promote management practices positively affecting them as sportspeople. Two ideas I’ve discussed in detail exemplify the potential for such a conflict: the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation and compensatory mortality. There is a potential conflict of interest, whether real or perceived, that might arise from researching or vocally supporting management schemes which benefit the researcher or manager through increased sporting opportunities. At the very least, a wildlife professional promoting a management scheme from which they personally benefit leads to poor optics and may raise questions about the underlying science and management decisions. Members of the general public should not hesitate to (respectfully) raise questions about these potential conflicts at stakeholder meetings and when given the opportunity to comment on regulatory decisions regarding wildlife in which they find an interest.
This is the only place I will directly address my fellow biologists in this book, and it is to say this: the scientific community needs to take an active role in policing these conflicts of interest. There is nothing inherently unethical about a biologist researching a species they pursue for sport. Scientists do their best work when researching topics in which they are interested; wildlife biologists are not, and should not be, different in this regard. Biologists in this position should however recognize the potential conflict of interest, do what they can to minimize resulting biases, and be open and transparent about them while interacting with stakeholders. Some steps toward minimizing conflicts are small: biologists can faithfully present all data, both positive and negative, to allow readers and managers to draw their own conclusions. Other feasible steps will require more concerted effort, and will likely require coordination between researchers, journals, management agencies, and funding sources. Researchers who actively pursue their study species might involve colleagues with no such conflict of interest. Likewise, pursuing funding from sources with no stake in the results may lessen conflicts for at least some projects where the researcher pursues their study species.
Scientific journals should also play an active role by explicitly detailing these practices as a conflict of interest that should be reported when submitting a manuscript. A simple inclusion of a conflict-of-interest statement like those seen in medical journals would greatly strengthen the public’s trust in scientific literature on wildlife management. Conflict statements are becoming more common in ecology journals, but we are still waiting for any of the major wildlife management journals to follow suit. It is unfortunately not uncommon to find propaganda, especially for the North American Model, masquerading as scientific literature. Readers should be aware if an author has financial or other interests in, for example, a pro-hunting organization when reading a paper promoting the conservation benefits of hunting. These and other steps should be discussed by the relevant scientific communities to decide which are most appropriate; some or all may be rejected. The goal should always be to ensure the best science is used in management of populations of game species. This includes frank and open discussions of possible conflicts of interest that might jeopardize the integrity of our field.
[a] This is the idealistic view of statistics…a good statistician can manipulate data in amazing ways, but it’s the goal of the peer-review process at scientific journals to minimize such shenanigans. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s not bad.
[b] Valentine NWR is a sea of grassy dunes for as far as the eye can see. I fell in love with similar habitats during my time in South Africa, and Valentine definitely fits my eye. If you like chasing upland birds, this is a must-hunt location, but don’t go there expecting an easy hunt.
[c] Demography is the study of how a population increases and decreases, focusing on things like birth, death, immigration, and emigration rates.
Chapter 12: Mistrust
[1] Marc J. Stern and Kimberly J. Coleman, "The Multidimensionality of Trust: Applications in Collaborative Natural Resource Management," Society & Natural Resources 28, no. 2 (2015).
[2] Shawn J. Riley et al., "Stakeholder Trust in a State Wildlife Agency," The Journal of Wildlife Management 82, no. 7 (2018).
[3] Justin Kruger and David Dunning, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments," Journal of personality and social psychology 77, no. 6 (1999).
[4] Anja Sorensen, Floris M. van Beest, and Ryan K. Brook, "Impacts of Wildlife Baiting and Supplemental Feeding on Infectious Disease Transmission Risk: A Synthesis of Knowledge," Preventive Veterinary Medicine 113, no. 4 (2014).
[5] Ben A Minteer and James P Collins, "From Environmental to Ecological Ethics: Toward a Practical Ethics for Ecologists and Conservationists," Science and Engineering Ethics 14, no. 4 (2008).