Wildlife Biology: Program Overview, Universities, Careers & Salaries

Program Overview

Wildlife Biology is a scientifically rigorous discipline dedicated to understanding the complex relationships between vertebrate wildlife, their environments, and the ecological systems they inhabit—spanning both remote natural landscapes and urbanized regions. This program equips students with advanced knowledge and practical skills to analyze, manage, and conserve wildlife populations and their habitats through evidence-based approaches.

• Animal Ecology: Explores how animals interact with their physical and biological environments, including population dynamics, species distribution, and ecosystem-level processes.
• Adaptational Biology: Focuses on the evolutionary mechanisms and physiological traits that enable wildlife to survive and thrive in diverse and changing environments.
• Urban Ecosystems: Investigates the ecological challenges and opportunities presented by human-dominated landscapes, including wildlife adaptation, habitat fragmentation, and human-wildlife conflict.
• Natural and Artificial Habitat Management: Covers strategies for restoring, maintaining, and designing habitats—both wild and human-modified—to support biodiversity and ecological resilience.
• Limnology: Studies freshwater ecosystems such as lakes, rivers, and wetlands, emphasizing their biological, chemical, and physical characteristics and their importance to aquatic wildlife.
• Wildlife Pathology: Examines diseases affecting wild animal populations, including transmission dynamics, diagnostic methods, and implications for conservation and public health.
• Vertebrate Zoological Specializations: Offers in-depth training in the study of specific vertebrate groups, including mammalogy (mammals), herpetology (reptiles and amphibians), ichthyology (fish), and ornithology (birds), each with distinct ecological roles and conservation needs.