Review by Choice Review
Most wildlife populations, along with their habitats worldwide, are in big trouble, regardless of whether animals are harvested, managed, or protected by law. Wildlife management, as practiced today, hardly performs. Mills (Univ. of Montana) provides a thorough, knowledge-based, clear presentation of the topic, including genetic perspectives. This new edition (1st ed., 2006) has been revised to reflect advances in this important field. The volume contains 14 chapters, divided among three parts: "Background to Applied Population Biology," "Population Processes," and "Applying Knowledge of Population Processes...." A 26-page index and 30-page reference list will be helpful for scholars. The book still celebrates classic and inefficient demographic views (fecundity, vital rates, focal species, stochastic and deterministic effects, etc.), but also acknowledges some of their shortcomings. This reviewer especially enjoyed the discussions of "population viability analysis" and "extinction vortex," illustrating how little biologists know and do about safeguarding wildlife populations. Mills sometimes tries to tackle the big picture and wider views, but the book falls short on modern perspectives related to topics such as ecological economics, nonlinear statistics (machine learning), social science, landscape ecology, animal behavior, climate change, adaptive management, and open source and data sharing. When using it as a textbook, faculty should supplement this publication accordingly. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty. F. Huettmann University of Alaska
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
