Wildlife management

Go back in history a wee bit.

I started off my career in wildlife management and spent about 10 years in large game management, fisheries management, migratory bird management.

And in that job, I spent a lot of time in bush plains and up north.

It got me really interested in wanting to be able to bring images back to that would...

And from that, I worked in almost every one of the Southern African countries extensively.

advising on wildlife management, conservation, community-based natural resource management.

Yeah, and it's been many episodes within that that have led me to be in one of the most privileged positions I think that anyone could have had if they're interested in conservation and wildlife.

But yeah, I've been extremely fortunate.

And what I found there is that their parks, a lot of them in America and especially Canada, are managed by people who have master's degree in business administration, MBAs,

okay? Mm-hmm.

because they have the leadership qualities, et cetera, and they don't need to know much about ecology or wildlife management, but they have the specialists immediately below them.

And if they have that, then it is a healthy kind of mix.

There's six, I think, six, right, in FWC divisions? Oh, I don't know.

Habitat and Species Conservation, Division of Law Enforcement, Freshwater Fisheries, Hunting and Game Management, and the Saltwater...

I'm losing the name of that one.

Sorry, but I think there's six.

the Harris chain,

right? So, you know, lake door, pick one, and they would say, okay, we have some plants, we have something out there, so let's come together as a working group.

So you have, you know, freshwater fisheries, habitat game management habitat species conservation or sorry hunting game management habitat species conservation and they have in each each different group has biologists in that group and they come and they say this is what our our thoughts are you know let's come to a consensus But despite that group, IPM always trumps.

There's never – they do – if IPM wants to spray, the opinions of these other biologists are put on the wayside.