[Role of modern hunting in wildlife management]

Although modern hunting is different from traditional hunting, it remains a controversial topic. A large number of scholars in the world have studied the effects of hunting on wild animals from an ecological, ethological, genetic and economic aspect. This paper reviewed the role of controlled hunting in wildlife production from population dynamics, behavior, genetic and a phenotypic level, and by integrating a large number of domestic and foreign literatures. Many studies have shown that regulated hunting is an efficient approach in managing wildlife populations, which could be beneficial to the recovery and possibly even growth of wildlife populations. Meanwhile, over-exploitation or inappropriate hunting could affect the sex, birth and mortality ratios of wildlife populations, change foraging behavior and socio-spatial behavior and generate artificial selection of their genotype and phenotype. To apply modern hunting properly to wildlife management, China could learn from successful hunting programs implemented in many other countries, which are based on ecological and economic principles to formulate scientifically determined hunting quotas and set up an effective system to regulate and manage the hunting of wildlife populations.