On behalf of the International Union of Game Biologists (IUGB) Organizing Committee, we are honoured to invite you to participate in the 35th IUGB Congress scheduled for 21-24 September 2021 in Budapest Hungary.
The 35th IUGB 2021 Congress provides a forum to present research and conducts workshops related to wildlife management, conservation, agriculture, forestry, hunting and trapping, urbanisation, ecosystem and economic development, and human-wildlife coexistence. Our goal is to build awareness around wildlife management’s critical issues and identify current challenges and opportunities.
Thus, the conference’s central theme is "Mission Anthropocene: Wildlife Management in the XXIst Century".
During the last half-century, ecological thinking and sustainability have been interconnected between complex economic, social and environmental issues. Sustainability of human development is feasible if it does not destroy the ecosystems which humans and wildlife depend on. Human populations continue to grow worldwide, and anthropogenic ecosystem changes increasingly affect nature: habitat degradation, fragmentation, and global warming change essential living conditions for plants and animals, including humans. There are increasing opportunities for contact among humans, domestic and wild animals, potentially intensifying the emergence of new infectious diseases. Concurrently, nations struggle with SARS-CoV-2, and the Anthropocene just started with the collapse of old self-confidence and difficult learning of new standards. Understanding the role of wildlife in emergings new diseases is as important as developing new medicines, drugs and vaccines.
With time, conflict management strategies covered manipulative management of populations and habitats (e.g., lethal control, translocation, population regulation, and protection of endangered species). Recent management approaches attempt to use scientific research and the arsenal of new technical tools, from molecular genetics to unmanned aerial vehicles (drones). As human-wildlife conflicts generate costs, their mitigation is a fundamental problem in managing biodiversity, ecosystems, and populations of all kinds. Biodiversity conservation is a tremendous challenge and depends on reliable knowledge of humans and wildlife’s complex interdependence.
There are a total of ten key topics for the conference, which are the following:
- Human-Wildlife Conflict: challenges and solutions
- Coexistence with wildlife in cities: challenges of urban wildlife management
- Managing impacts of ungulates and predators – game and/or pest?
- Population dynamics, monitoring and the adaptive management of wild populations
- Conserving genetic diversity of wildlife: the importance of scales and connectivity
- Evidence-based wildlife conservation: from data collection to systematic monitoring
- Emerging new diseases: wildlife conservation and the One Health approach
- Human dimensions and effective communication of conservation science
- Measuring and recognising the conservation success of recovered species: from evidence to change
- Wildlife management in 21st-century agricultural landscapes
These topics may change in the future based on the submitted abstracts, and suggestions of the Scientific Committee. We would like to keep things as open as possible and allow for flexibility at later phases. Please be so kind as to share your thoughts about the above-listed topics and let us know if you have any proposal to consider.
We believe that the future of wildlife conservation will be in the hands of the young generation, and we plan to invite young colleagues under the umbrella of a "Young Wildlifers Forum." The 35th IUGB Congress will see more activities that involve specifically young, early-career wildlife scientists. Young participants will be selected through the application process and will be connected through an elaborate forum.
Dear Colleague, we are honoured to invite you to participate in the 35th IUGB Congress!