Mission

The Association’s mission is to strive for sustainable health of people, wildlife, and ecosystems by promoting discovery, understanding and transdisciplinarity.

Objectives The specific objectives of the Association toward this overarching mission are to:

a) serve a diverse community, policy makers, practitioners and the general public
b) encourage development of transdisciplinary teaching, research and problem solving that cut across many fields of scholarship (including natural, social and health sciences, and the humanities) and draws upon multiple types of knowledge.

Collaborative Discovery

We strive to promote the highest (and often the most challenging) level of collaborative discovery: exploration that is ‘transdisciplinary’.

Transdisciplinary pursuits involve combining strengths to achieve hybridized innovative approaches to problem-solving. Today’s complex environmental public health challenges demand this level of strategic team-based approaches to the tightly coupled human-natural system interactions underlying many of our most pressing threats to our sustained health and environment.

The Association will advance a broader discourse between the fields of ecology (both natural and social ecology) and health and serve as a network and bridge across other societies.

The following policy statements for the Animal Population Management Program provide guidance for how program objectives will be achieved.

It is intended that policy will be added, deleted or modified as conditions require.

1. Protect target and non-target animal populations by exercising needed control using environmentally responsible management techniques and methods.
2. Protect sheep, goats, cattle, hogs, poultry, and other domestic livestock by preventing or reducing mammal and/or bird predation.
3. Protect standing and stored agricultural crops, by preventing or reducing mammal and/or bird depredations.
4. Protect newly introduced or seriously depressed wildlife by preventing or reducing mammal and/or bird depredations.
5. Protect human health and safety by resolving wildlife-caused threats and nuisance situations by preventing the spread of animal-borne diseases.
6. Protect urban, residential, and industrial property by disseminating
   information on methods of preventing or reducing mammal and/or bird damage or when cooperating funds are available, by conducting urban programs.
7. Assure all animal damage management programs are conducted in an environmentally sound manner.
8. Support “best management practices” in animal damage management by providing assistance to ongoing wildlife research efforts.
9. When feasible, resolve problems caused by individual animals or local populations of wildlife, as contrasted to population control over vast areas
10. Provide assistance to reduce conflicts between predators and livestock by encouraging the use of appropriate livestock husbandry techniques.
11. Management methods shall be used in the most selective and humane manner possible.
12. The Association and its cooperators will comply with applicable State, and local laws and regulations.
13. Wildlife damage management on public lands will be conducted in accordance with memoranda of understanding between the program in existence and the land managing agencies.
14. The Association may cooperate in research activities when it is compatible with the program needs and priorities.
15. The Association will encourage an interchange of information among the State representatives to assist others to maintain and improve professional competency.
16. Only those animal damage control activities that are biologically sound, economically feasible, and environmentally acceptable will be encouraged. All new methods will be thoroughly tested for effectiveness and impacts prior to their use or recommended use by the Association.
17. The Association will not fund projects using bounties as a management method.
18. Lethal techniques to control wildlife-caused conflicts will be used or recommended so long as there is no long-term significant impact on national or regional population levels.
19. Effective liaison will be maintained with all parties interested in the Animal Management Program.
20. Individuals and/or agencies receiving economic or other benefits from the program, or agencies primarily concerned with such assistance should contribute funds and/or manpower support for the conduct of such activities.
21. The Association may provide assistance to private animal damage control efforts on an extension basis or may serve in an advisory capacity to make such efforts more selective and effective.
22. The final determination as to the Association participation in a requested control project will rest with the Board.