Conclusion: Knowledge and Skills for Professional Practice

Most professionals beginning their careers in species and ecosystem conservation conceive of their future work in terms of hands-on tasks in the field (“doing something important in the real world”). Whether on the domestic or the international scene, typically the forester sees themselves laying out timber sales, the fisheries biologist looks forward to surveying streams, and the range specialist expects to be classifying grasslands. Current curricula in most universities largely mirror this common view. We train future foresters to address logging problems in the Pacific Northwest or in the tropics, or conservation biologists to design a reserve or study an endangered species. But in actual practice, most professionals spend only part—and sometimes a small part—of their time attending to technical tasks in the field. Professionals, over a career or a lifetime, participate in many activities well beyond fieldwork, and there is much more to building a successful professional practice today than skills in technical work in the field. But what specifically are these other activities? What theories, approaches, and skills are needed to be successful? What are the standards of effective, efficient, and ethical practice? In this concluding chapter, we provide our answers to these questions by (1) presenting what we view as a broader and more realistic conception of a modern professional’s natural resource practice; (2) reviewing the interdisciplinary problem-solving approach discussed throughout this Bulletin; and (3) demonstrating the usefulness of this approach in professional practice, using examples from the student papers included in this volume.