This is a writing-intensive course challenging students to understand the biological relationship between wildlife fitness and environmental factors, how this relationship informs habitat managment efforts, and how the relationship has been translated into laws and policy.

Althought the taxonomic focus of the course is terrestrial vertebrates and the geographic emphasis is on North America, examples of the species-environment linkage are drawn from throughout the world and accross taxa.

There are two major writing assignments in the course. In the first, students conduct a detailed review of an existing habitat managment plan (such as an ESA species recovery plan). In the second, teams of students select a locally occurring species or species assemblage and compile an orignal habitat plan for an explicit, small-scale geographic area.