ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses how the challenge of managing wild animals is inextricably intertwined with hunting practices. The origins of modern, globally distributed wildlife management are often traced back to the North American conservationist, forester and hunter Aldo Leopold. With the extension of hunting knowledge to a hunting science, came the need for specialist knowledge that could not be provided by hunters themselves but had to come from academic or bureaucratic state officials. Although approaches to and definitions of wildlife management are numerous, they all seem to agree on a conception of what Gisela Kangler calls ecosystem-wilderness (Ökosystem-Wildnis). Hunting had been a common right for every ‘free man’ for the ancient Germans. Hunting in Germany has been intimately connected with the practice of Hege since the early middle ages. Nowadays, religious sentiments are almost completely absent from hunting.
