Wildlife refers to all living, undomesticated organisms inhabiting natural environments (Chandra, 2011). In the context of wildlife management, the term ‘wildlife’ in this module focuses on terrestrial vertebrates in all biomes and geographic areas.

Wildlife is extremely important for both people and the environment as it is an essential natural resource and it contributes to the maintenance of forest ecological services and ecosystem health.

It plays a key role in regulating natural processes at all levels of the food chain, including seed dispersal, nutrient cycling even landscape structure, and delivers provisioning services (such as those that produce food and income) to a substantial proportion of the world’s poorest people, including forest-dependent communities as well as urban populations. Wildlife contributes to national economies, too, through such things as tourism and the trade in wild animal products.

There are many uses for wildlife, and they are generally organized into two categories: 1) extractive (or consumptive) use refers to the removal of wildlife from its habitat and often involves reductions in wildlife populations by killing (e.g. hunting); and 2) non-extractive (or non-consumptive) use implies unintrusive action on wildlife populations (e.g. wildlife photography and bird-watching), but also non-traditional uses such as harvesting a specific product (e.g. eider down, vicuña fiber) (Lichtenstein, 2009). Wildlife can be used for subsistence, commerce or recreation.