Third edition of “Conservation of Wildlife Populations” hits the streets!

In 1995 I arrived at University of Montana (UM) Wildlife Biology Program as a newbie assistant professor fresh out of professional preparation including real-world applied field research projects, an MS in Wildlife Biology and a PhD with Michael Soulé, the visionary founder of the discipline of Conservation Biology. The first class I was asked to teach at UM was a senior-level course called “Conservation of Wildlife Populations,” which up to that point was mostly a collection of conservation case studies.

At that time the disciplines of wildlife management, conservation biology, evolutionary biology, quantitative ecology, and genetics were taught in isolation by profs who focused on one or maybe two of those topics. My experiences and training had convinced me that on-the-ground conservation decision-making could be vastly improved by combining insights from all of these fast-evolving scientific fields. With that conviction I totally transformed the class to convey how merging these individually red-hot scientific disciplines could reveal non-intuitive insights into how to recover and sustain wild animal populations.

But I hit a snag: no textbook existed for such a class. So I had to pull chapters and journal articles from each discipline separately and then labor in my lectures to convince the students that actually all these independent ideas belonged in one boat, rowing together.

I felt that my lectures convinced the students to at least consider these radical

notions, but they were frustrated and perplexed by the hodgepodge of disparate

readings. I wished that somebody would write a book that brought all these pieces

together in one voice.

But as one of my buddies’ Grandma used to say, “Wish in one hand and shit in

the other and see which fills up first.” So instead of wishing, I told myself that if no such

textbook appeared by my 5 th year of teaching this course then I would write one during

my first sabbatical year. Being my first book, it turned out I way underestimated how

long it would take. But I got a good start during my sabbatical year at Viginia Tech

University, and finally in 2007 published the first edition of “Conservation of Wildlife

Populations: Demography, Genetics, and Management.”

Because the topics are challenging – lots of math and science-y details to grasp

– I worked hard to convey in written form the tricks I used in lectures: breaking down

intellectually scary topics with lots of puns, jokes, gossip and drawing metaphorical

relevance from books of fiction. That’s not a usual way to write a science textbook, and

when the publishers sent out my draft book manuscript out for review by other profs,

one response was that “Mills writing style is too chatty and unprofessional and must be

rewritten to follow scientific writing standards.” I told the publishers they had to either choose to publish what I wrote and how I wrote it, or find somebody else to follow this

stodgy profs’ desire for yet another boring book that nobody reads.

I’m proud to say the book has been a hit, with great reviews and uptake by not only

universities around the world but also by wildlife and conservation practitioners in

agencies, non-profits, and consulting firms. But the praise I most appreciated came

from students I would meet at conferences who appreciated the readable style and told

me it was the first science textbook they actually read because it made them laugh just

when the topic was getting frightfully deep.

With the acceleration both within the scientific fields I wrote about and especially

in their cross-pollination and application, after a few years the publishers requested a 2nd

edition. I took this not as some quick tune-up of a few references and examples, but

rather as a chance to improve throughout with new findings, updated techniques, and

an expanded geographic and taxonomic breadth of examples. Conservation of Wildlife

Populations 2 nd edition was published in 2013.

Me and co-authors Dr. Andrew Whiteley and Dr. Mahdieh Tourani at the University of Montana.

My career was pretty packed by then, with lots of projects and students and a

move across country for a different job for 3 years, then returning. But by around 2019 it was time for a 3rd edition. I changed publishers and brought on as co-authors Dr.Andrew Whiteley and Dr. Mahdieh Tourani, talented younger University of Montana

profs (what can I say, it’s an amazing program!) who could inject their next-gen insights

into this now firmly established and ever-proliferating field of applied wildlife population

ecology.

The bones and style of the first 2 editions remained (yes, including the jokes and

gossip), but the 3rd edition of “Conservation of Wildlife Populations” is a major

overhaul and update. It has a different subtitle, replacing “Demography, Genetics and

Management” with “Applications of Ecological, Evolutionary, and Genetic Concepts”.

The scope is expanded, now including fish and fisheries applications for the first time,

and deeper consideration of topics ranging from how to estimate births, deaths, and

population dynamics from field data; to DNA and genomic analysis; to hierarchical

modeling, stochastic demography, and structured decision-making.

In the Preface of the 2025 3rd edition we open with “The aim of this book is to

provide students and professionals a hard-nosed, science-based foundation for positive

actions to nurture wildlife conservation on a changing planet.” We also acknowledge

that “at this moment in 2025, the world is experiencing unprecedented political and

cultural attacks on (among other things) the science and practice of wildlife

conservation.”

And yet, as we also note: “At the same time, the science of applied population

ecology, and its potential to contribute to creative win-win solutions, continues to

dramatically expand in both scope and utility. Thus, challenges to biodiversity are

greater than ever, but so is the scientific framework that underlies non-intuitive insights

and practical solutions.”

I call it a platform for science-based optimism.