Online Undergraduate Certificate in Fish and Wildlife Management

This course focuses on national fish and wildlife policy, programs, and contemporary issues. Topics addressed in the course include historical and contemporary fish and wildlife policy; major fish and wildlife federal, state, and local programs; economic incentives and disincentives associated with fish and wildlife; and non-U.S. approaches to fish and wildlife issues.

The course explores conceptually the ecological knowledge needed for wildlife conservation, including how species behavior and life history evolves and ultimately how that shapes wildlife populations. Traditional wildlife management topics will be included, along with an added emphasis on ethological implications that affect biological diversity. In addition, human behavior and its impact on wildlife populations and diversity will be studied through case studies, scientific literature, and assigned readings.

This course is an introduction to environmental policy, regulation, and law in the U.S. Subjects covered will include command and control of regulation, air quality, water quality, control of toxic materials, waste management, energy, and natural resources.

This course focuses on the federal, state, and local agencies, policies, strategies, and public law that influences the public lands management of the United States, and, to a lesser extent, other countries. The focus of the course is the historical and contemporary land management approaches used to protect, exploit, manage, and/or use public lands in the United States. Topics include jurisdictional issues over public land, federal agencies involved in land management, state and local issues and land management, and contemporary issues associated with land management in the 21st Century.

This course examines the fundamental laws of population ecology, providing an overview of the underpinnings of population theory. Emphasis is placed on these principles as applied to conservation and management of fish and wildlife populations. Topics include assessing extinction risk of rare species, invasion dynamics of exotic species, demographic and environmental stochasticity, metapopulation dynamics, structured populations, species interactions, interspecific interactions, and micro-evolutionary processes. Use of case studies will demonstrate the application of population ecology models and methods to the management of fish and wildlife populations, and provide the opportunity to apply concepts to current problems and challenges in this field. Students will complete quantitative analyses throughout this course, and a familiarity with college algebra or statistics is encouraged.

This course provides an intensive treatment of the field of ecology. Ecology is the scientific study of the interactions among organisms and their environment, which explains the distribution and dynamics of organisms, their traits, and the effects that they have on the natural world. Students will learn that ecology is an integrative discipline that draws from various fields of biology (physiology, morphology, behavior, evolution) and natural sciences (e.g., geology and chemistry), as well as other disciplines (e.g., economics and social sciences). The focus of the course will be on identifying and recommending solutions to ecological problems, e.g., habitat destruction and fragmentation, biodiversity, global environmental change, desertification, acidification of the oceans, and others.

This course is designed to review the practical application of watershed planning as a tool to manage land, water, and ecosystem resources. Students will explore the public policies and practices of watershed planning by examining case studies in water supply, water quality, drought, floodplain, and storm water management in the U.S. The watershed management curriculum will utilize a multi-disciplinary approach, involving the fields of geography, environmental science, geology, public policy, urban and regional land planning, geographic information systems (GIS) and engineering.