Learning for the Future: Educating Career Fisheries and Wildlife Professionals

Demand for career professionals in the fish and wildlife professions is expected to increase over the next 10–12 years. I discuss education and training of fisheries and wildlife career professionals including who colleges and universities need to educate to meet the professions' needs. I provide a perspective on what these career professionals will need to know and how we will educate and train them. I suggest that we need to educate a more diverse workforce and a workforce that adopts an international perspective on fisheries and wildlife conservation. Designing curricula to meet the professions’ needs will require on-going dialog with state, provincial, and federal agencies and will require innovative approaches that integrate knowledge requirements for these jobs with skill development. The ideal curriculum will have bounded flexibility, accommodate multiple career goals, integrate essential skills and incorporate conservation-relevant concepts throughout, meet professional certification requirements, accommodate study abroad opportunities, and will include at least two internships.