Decisions made by wildlife managers today have long-lasting effects. Wildlife management in the 21st century is highly complex (Ascher 2001; Cilliers et al.2013), requiring diverse skills for effective movement of conservation and sustainability in a positive direction. Broadly, wildlife managers have three primary responsibilities 1) people, 2) habitat, and 3) animal populations. In North America the public plays a critical, active role in wildlife conservation by providing funding (through taxation and license sales; Organ et al. 2012), interacting with public agencies that serve as wildlife trustees (Organ et al. 2012), and by voting (Kilpatrick and Walter 1997). Habitat is the foundation of wildlife population performance, and managers frequently manipulate habitats to affect populations (Morrison et al. 1992; Messmer 2009). The ultimate indicator of successful wildlife conservation and sustainable management is population performance, best expressed as long-term population growth rate (Lindenmayer 2000). Managers coordinate the actions of people, and manipulate habitats and populations to affect long-term population growth rate to meet some objective. For overabundant wildlife causing property damage, the objective is likely to reduce populations and mitigate damage (e.g., Conover 2001). For rare species, the objective is likely to increase distribution, numbers, and population growth rate (e.g., Wydeven et al. 2009). Collectively, people, habitat, and animal populations form the "three-legged stool" of wildlife management (Leopold 1987).My dissertation is a combination of research topics that include components of the "three-legged stool" of wildlife management. An underlying theme is the connection humans have with their environments. In Chapter 1, I assessed what motivated current natural resource students to choose natural resources as a career, recognizing that younger generations in the United States may not relate to the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Younger generations in the United States are increasingly urbanized (Manfredo et al. 2003), often at the expense of utilitarian connections to wildlife and under-appreciation for some tools used to manage animal populations like hunting and trapping (Manfredo et al. 2003). However, younger generations have a close non-utilitarian connection to wildlife and the environment (Manfredo et al. 2003), offering a substantial conservation opportunity. This places organizations relying on hunting, trapping, and fishing license sales to implement wildlife conservation (e.g., state resource agencies) in a difficult position. On one hand, funding for the organization is tied to an increasingly outdated interest in wildlife (for example) so implementation of programs and activities must maintain or attempt to increase those interests. Conversely, those programs may alienate younger generations, potentially missing a critical opportunity to engage the broader public in conservation. Ultimately, wildlife management organizations recognize that employees must represent diverse and value public interests to remain relevant in the 21st century. In my first chapter, I analyzed family backgrounds and current interests of student enrolled in natural resource programs in the United States to understand motivating factors that influenced their apparent career decision. The premise was to lay a foundation for understanding the future employee pool responsible for implementing wildlife conservation, guide student recruiting into the profession, and offer suggestions to improve college natural resource course offerings.Managers use harvest regulations to achieve habitat or animal population objectives and to influence public participation and interest (e.g., Riley et al. 2002; Lauber et al. 2012). Factors affecting participation and effort in wildlife harvest by the public are multi-faceted and complex in space, time, and circumstance (Riley et al. 2002; Enck 2006). For example, weather conditions (Obbard et al. 1999), state of the economy (Obbard et al. 1999), and social or cultural demographics (Miller and Vaske 2003) affect hunting participation and effort. Given that harvest regulations are a key element of many wildlife conservation programs, increased understanding of factors that motivate people to participate and be successful benefit management organizations. In Chapter 2, I investigated factors that effected trapping success of American marten (Martes americanus) in Michigan. I sought to determine what factors could potentially be manipulated by wildlife managers to affect harvest success. I evaluated factors directly controlled by managers (e.g., distance from maintained roads), those related to socio-economic forces beyond the management organization (e.g., pelt prices), and factors that were uncontrollable (e.g., weather). As such, this chapter contains all the elements of the "three-legged stool" of wildlife management; how trapping success (a measure of trapper involvement and effort) influenced marten populations under varying habitat conditions.Wildlife conservation programs often include some form of habitat management. In some instances, wildlife conservation can be included in practices commonly used for resource extraction like timber harvest. In forested regions of North America, managers commonly use timber harvest purposefully to provide wildlife habitat (e.g., Linden and Roloff 2013). In other instances, timber extraction is the primary management objective but wildlife considerations are included (Blinn and Kilgore 2001; Demarais et al. 2017). One way to include wildlife in timber harvest objectives is through retention forestry, where managers retain elements of the pre-harvest forest to increase structural complexity (Fedrowitz et al. 2014; Mori and Kitagawa 2014). Retention forestry is particularly relevant in silvicultural systems like clearcutting, where managers remove all merchantable trees. Clearcutting is a common practice used on aspen (Populus spp.) forests in Michigan, and foresters are required to retain unharvested trees to provide wildlife habitat (Bielecki 2012). Retention of these trees comes at a cost through lost timber revenues, potentially increased safety hazards for equipment operators, and potential loss of forest regeneration. Hence, knowing that retention forestry is having a positive effect on wildlife populations is a critical information need. Otto and Roloff (2012) found that retention forestry in aspen clearcuts of Michigan had minimal effect on bird occupancy probability, and they surmised that landscape context was an important consideration. In Chapter 3, I evaluated how songbird occupancy related to structural retention in aspen clearcuts using a hierarchical model that included patch- and landscape-factors, with the goal of better understanding how landscape context affected the function of retained structures as bird habitats. Although this chapter focuses on habitat management and how it affected a population parameter (i.e., occupancy), the results inform decisions made by managers and policy-makers (i.e., people).My dissertation research encapsulated the three responsibilities of a wildlife manager (people, habitat, and populations), highlight the importance of multi-dimensional training and experiences for managers. I also used sound sampling designs and a suite of modeling approaches to generate scientific evidence, consistent with efforts to infuse science into natural resources decision-making (Mills and Clark 2001). Results from my research offer insights into how people decide to embark on wildlife careers, how people respond to socio-economic and environmental factors to manipulate wildlife populations, and how habitat management decisions by people can influence wildlife populations.
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