ORGANIZATIONAL AND POLITICAL FACTORS AFFECTING STATE WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

Objectives of state wildlife management appear to reflect 2 different goals: development of wildlife resources and optimization of public benefits from wildlife resources. Habitat and population management commonly are used to attain objectives relating to the first goal. Procedures to increase hunting opportunity, public knowledge, and nonhunting associated with wildlife relate to attaining the second goal. Most management activities are compatible with both goals, although there may be situations where conflicting action plans result. Managers may perceive a biological need to develop wildlife resources that have little value to people. There may also be cases where increased public benefits are provided at the expense of resource values. These benefits most likely occur when excessive public demand is placed upon a limited supply of wildlife resources. Hendee (1974) showed that the objectives of wildlife management have evolved from bagged, to recreation days, to the providing of multiple-satisfactions. Wildlife population and habitat objectives, in the latter stage, were considered as intermediate to a larger goal of managing wildlife for public benefits. Management with a multiple-satisfactions policy requires public demand for experiences associated with wildlife first be measured and resources then be developed to satisfy that demand. Resource-oriented management operates in a reverse fashion by first describing the opportunities for resource development and then providing the most public benefits. The multiple-satisfactions approach uses benefits to describe the need for resource management. The resource-oriented approach describes benefits as consequences of management. Both of these perspectives consider recreation, and other types of public benefits, as an important objective of wildlife management. Because assumes a key role in the process of wildlife management, it is important to have a precise understanding of factors that contribute to the amount of wildlife-associated occurring in the states. The number of days of participation in associated with wildlife depends on public demand. Age, sex, urbanization, occupation, and other demographic characteristics of state populations have been related to participation in hunting (Applegate 1977) and nonconsumptive uses of wildlife (Langenau 1979). The amount of wildlife-associated occurring in a state depends on the available supply of wildlife resources. Participation in hunting has been shown to depend on the size of game populations (Langenau and Aldrich 1981) and degree of access to land (Brown and Thompson 1976). Days of participation in nonhunting associated with wildlife are also likely to show a strong dependency on supply factors. Data from the 1980 National Survey of Hunting, Fishing, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation (U.S. Dep. Inter. 1983) are being analyzed to describe the supply and demand factors influencing many types of associated with wildlife populations and habitats (Lyons and Shaw 1982). In addition to supply and demand factors, days of participation in wildlife-associated