Fewer universities offer degrees in fish and wildlife management today than at any time in 80 years. For the past couple of decades, graduates of these programs have declined about 2% annually. In their place, training in conservation biology has become more popular, and the percentage of schools offering degrees in this discipline have increased by about 24% over the last 20 years. In large measure, this shift reflects market dynamics – modern students are increasingly drawn to topics like climate change, biodiversity loss, sustainability, and ecosystem restoration. The consequence is that conservation biologists now outnumber wildlife biologists in many state agencies.
Although conservation biologists into fish and wildlife agency roles sounds sensible on paper—after all, both fields deal with nature—in practice, it can create real problems when the job is managing game species, setting harvest regulations, and balancing human use with ecological health. The issue isn’t that conservation biologists lack intelligence or good intentions; it’s that their training, incentives, and professional culture often don’t align with the mission of state fish and wildlife agencies.
At its core, conservation biology is a crisis-driven discipline. It emerged to address biodiversity loss, species extinctions, and habitat degradation. As a result, it tends to emphasize precaution, protection, and minimizing human impact. Fish and wildlife agencies, by contrast, were built around a different model—the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation—which treats wildlife as a renewable public resource to be actively managed, used, and sustained. That includes hunting, fishing, trapping, and habitat manipulation to maintain populations at levels that ecosystems—and people—can support. When conservation biologists step into these roles, there can be a philosophical mismatch: one approach seeks to limit use, the other to manage and enable it.
This difference shows up in decision-making. Fish and wildlife management is inherently applied and outcome-driven. Managers must make timely decisions with imperfect data—setting seasons, bag limits, and population targets often on annual cycles. Conservation biology, however, leans heavily toward longer-term research, uncertainty analysis, and risk aversion. That can lead to paralysis or overly cautious policies that ignore the costs of inaction. For example, delaying harvest opportunities in the name of uncertainty can undermine population control goals, reduce public engagement, and erode funding streams tied to license sales.
Another issue is scale and focus. Conservation biologists are often trained to think at ecosystem or landscape scales, with an emphasis on rare, threatened, or endangered species. State wildlife agencies, however, spend most of their time managing abundant, sometimes overabundant species—white-tailed deer, waterfowl, turkeys, and game fish. These species require active population management, including lethal harvest, habitat manipulation, and sometimes controversial interventions. A professional culture centered on protecting vulnerable species may not be well-suited to making decisions that intentionally reduce populations or prioritize common species over rare ones.
Funding realities further complicate things. State fish and wildlife agencies are largely funded by hunters and anglers through license fees and excise taxes. This creates an implicit social contract: agencies manage wildlife in a way that sustains both the resource and the opportunity to use it. Conservation biologists, especially those trained in academic or NGO settings, may not fully appreciate this user-pay system or the importance of maintaining public support among consumptive users. Policies that alienate hunters and anglers risk undermining the very funding base that supports conservation work across all species, not just game animals.
There’s also a practical skills gap. Fish and wildlife management is as much about logistics and implementation as it is about theory. It involves coordinating field staff, working with landowners, navigating political pressures, and communicating with diverse stakeholders—especially rural communities. Conservation biology programs often emphasize research design, statistical analysis, and publication, but may offer less training in these on-the-ground management realities. The result can be professionals who are well-versed in theory but less prepared for the operational demands of agency work.
Finally, there’s the risk of mission drift. When agencies begin to prioritize the perspectives and priorities of conservation biology over traditional wildlife management, they may gradually shift away from their core mandate. This can manifest in reduced hunting and fishing opportunities, less emphasis on game species, and a growing disconnect between agencies and the public they serve. Over time, that erosion of trust can be difficult to reverse.
None of this means conservation biologists have no place in state agencies. Their expertise is essential for endangered species recovery, habitat conservation planning, and addressing emerging threats like climate change. The problem arises when their training and worldview dominate roles that are fundamentally about managing renewable wildlife resources for sustainable use.
A better approach is balance. This will require stakeholders and agencies to put more pressure on land grant (i.e., publicly-funded) universities. At the same time, agencies will need to be more intentional about matching training and background to job function—hiring wildlife managers for management roles, and conservation biologists for conservation-specific challenges. This may require changes to state hiring practices yet when both perspectives are integrated thoughtfully, agencies can protect biodiversity while still fulfilling their only funded responsibility to manage wildlife as a renewable resource that serves “the greatest good, for the greatest number, for the longest period of time” (Gifford Pinchot).