The Wildlife Society 2020 Virtual Conference T-Shirt Campaign

Vision
The Wildlife Society is a strong and effective voice in representing wildlife conservation and management, and ensuring sustainable wildlife populations in healthy ecosystems.

Mission
To inspire, empower, and enable wildlife professionals to sustain wildlife populations and habitats through science-based management and conservation.

History
Founded in 1937, The Wildlife Society is an international network of nearly 10,000 leaders in wildlife science, management and conservation who are dedicated to excellence in wildlife stewardship.

Wildlife conservation emerged as a social and political movement in the United States and Canada during the 19th Century. The movement was led by “sport hunters,” who decried the devastating losses of wildlife caused by “market hunters” – those who hunted for profit. One of the major causes of market hunting was the Industrial Revolution, since it shifted human populations from farms to the cities, and created a demand for meat. As sport hunters organized to protect lands from market hunting, they developed codes of conduct and ethics and promoted the concept of “Fair Chase,” where some central purposes of hunting became things such as the development of pioneer skills and self restraint. Most importantly, the advocacy of organized sport hunters through the New York Sportsmen’s Club, the Boone and Crockett Club, the Campfire Club and others resulted in government at the state, provincial and federal levels taking legal responsibility for wildlife conservation and management.

The early years saw much progress, with the establishment of state and provincial game agencies in both the United States and Canada, and the Federal Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy (later the Bureau of Biological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) in the U.S. Through the early 1900’s, wildlife conservation was mostly a program of refuge establishment, game breeding, law enforcement, predator control, establishment of seasons and bag limits, and surveys. As time went on, however, many leading conservationists began to realize that more actions were needed in order to stem continuing losses and conserve wildlife.

Wildlife conservation and management became recognized as a formal discipline in the 1930’s. Wildlifers had been meeting annually for many years, but until Aldo Leopold, Arthur Allen, and Herbert Stoddard began to give presentations on wildlife ecology and management in the late 1920’s, the topics discussed focused largely on game breeding. Leopold and a distinguished group of wildlife conservationists were asked by the American Game Institute (now Wildlife Management Institute) to draft a policy to guide wildlife conservation. The 1930 American Game Policy laid out a broad vision, acknowledging that existing conservation programs were inadequate to stem the declines in wildlife. The policy called for a program of restoration implemented by scientifically trained professionals with a stable funding source. The policy also declared it was time for wildlife management to “be recognized as a distinct profession and developed accordingly.”

The subsequent establishment of university programs (beginning with Wisconsin in 1933) and the Cooperative Wildlife Research Units gave life to the policy. The Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act provided stable funding as called for in the policy (Robertson was one of the policy’s authors).

Wildlife conservation and management still lacked a nucleus – the organization to establish professional and ethical standards and promote communication. In the summer of 1935, Ted Frison, Director of the Illinois Natural History Survey, wrote to several colleagues encouraging them to meet in Urbana to discuss the problems they shared in achieving conservation. Wildlifers from many Midwest states met in Urbana that December to discuss forming a national professional society. Two months later in February 1936, the First North American Wildlife Conference was held in Washington, D.C. The Midwesterners brought their idea to a larger audience, and the Society of Wildlife Specialists was formed, with Ralph (Terry) King as its first president. One year later, at the Second North American Wildlife Conference in St. Louis, the first formal meeting was held and the name was changed to The Wildlife Society.