A much-awaited book on Wildlife Management authored by India's top conservationist Rajesh Gopal, who is also the Member Secretary, National Tiger Conservation Authority, brings in the much needed synergy between wildlife academics and field management.
The "Fundamentals of Wildlife Management" released by Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan last week says wildlife management is a composite discipline, requiring proficiency in basic ecology, zoology, botany, taxonomy, statistics, behaviour, population dynamics, habitat appraisal, estimation techniques and their related modern analytical tools.
The chapters are tailor cut to meet the needs of field managers, and interalia cover values of wildlife, study of signs and symptoms, basic animal biology and ecology, wildlife habitat, basic statistics, habitat analysis and evaluation, animal behaviour and wildlife population and interactions.
It also includes population estimation, habitat requirements and attributes of some animal species, radio telemetry, wildlife policy and legislation, human wildlife conflict, health care and above all, the in-situ and ex-situ conservation practices in the Indian context.
The book containing 17 chapters, running into 1,277 pages with 298 figures and 89 tables has all the major advances in contemporary wildlife science in the last three decades, Gopal said.
In fact, it builds on the practices evolved in the Indian context vis-