Welcome to HGEO803: Cultural Issues in Wildlife Management

Elective Unit (Habitat Group 1)
Offered annually in Semester 2
Value - 4 credit points

About the unit

HGEO803 Cultural Issues in Wildlife Management develops conceptual tools to address cross-cultural relationships in wildlife management systems. Using Australian and international examples, it explores different ways of seeing and thinking about key concepts, including “wildlife”, “resource” and “management” and requires students to develop a critical self-awareness of cultural contexts of wildlife management.

Its role in the Master of Wildlife Management (Habitat) program is to supplement the strong scientific orientation of other units with a contemporary social science perspective on the complex and overlapping cultural, social and environmental contexts of wildlife management regimes and the issues that arise in intercultural spaces where different ontological perspectives on people-nature relationships shape the making and interpretation of knowledge and meaning.

HGEO803 is also available to students in a range of other programs in Human Geography, Social Science and Environmental Studies. The interdisciplinary student group provides opportunities for students to debate across a range of conceptual, methodological and practical issues as part of their work in this unit.

Topics covered include:

• Species-specific management regimes involving multiple stakeholder interests for whales, wolves, dugong, caribou, reindeer, elephants, kangaroo and bilbies.
• Habitat and location specific management regimes such as National Parks, Indigenous Protected Areas, Catchment Management Authorities and urban reserves.
• Intercultural structures for regulation and management of wildlife and conservation spaces such as co-management, community-based natural resource management, tribal governance structures (eg Nunavut), community-based self-management and international cooperative structures.

On completion of the unit, students will have increased their awareness of and sensitivity to the ways in which political-economic and socio-cultural issues intersect with scientific approaches to wildlife management. They will have knowledge of the social impacts of management decisions and programs. They will develop skills in understanding the different values, ontologies and priorities of non-scientific stakeholders in several sorts of management regimes. The unit will also foster exploration of cross-cultural ethical engagement, intercultural communication, and empowerment of marginalised stakeholder groups in conflict situations arising from wildlife management activities.

Assessment tasks include:

• 4000 word research paper (50%)
• 2500 word assignment/presentation (30%)
• contributions to hypothetical scenario exercises on the Internet (20%).

The unit is offered using a flexible delivery method with learning materials delivered online.