Entry-level professionals should/have the ability to:
Communications, Professionalism, & Operational Management
- Be professionally mature; be consistently ethical, honest, and reliable
- Plan and manage work projects (including budgeting)
- Troubleshoot and solve problems; capable of sound decision-making
- Write concisely, professionally, and accurately in several different styles including technical, popular, and correspondence
- Communicate concisely and professionally with multiple audiences with various levels of knowledge, various interests, and opinions (adjust language as needed for each audience)
- Engage in respectful/professional deliberation and discussion
- Possess safety habits
Quantitative/Analytical Skills
- Work with GPS, GIS, topographical maps and other digital spatial information
- Retrieve technical information and assess its reliability
- Enter, organize and maintain data using computer applications
- Summarize data in graphs, charts and tables
- Understand and use basic statistics
- Estimate vital population parameters from field data.
- Understand and use adaptive management
Social Science Skills
- Understand and engage multiple stakeholders; including how public and legislative values affect participatory management
- Work and solve problems in teams
- Understand governance, major laws relevant to natural structures, agency structures, common programs and funding sources for natural resources
- Understand conflict at multiple scales, including its emotional and cognitive aspects; ability to respond to, manage, resolve, or prevent conflict
- Integrate ecological and social considerations when making decisions and planning natural resource actions
- Be familiar with the practical realities of common land uses and their potential to create natural resource conflicts and opportunities
- Be familiar with hunting and angling, and the role of sportsmen's groups in fish and wildlife management and conservation
Natural Science Skills
- Recognize and identify all common Minnesota fish/wildlife species, know their basic life histories
- Carry out common animal fleld sampling methods
- Carry out vegetation sampling and possess plant ID skills
- Assess habitat suitability for target species based on field observations
- Plan, implement, and evaluate habitat management and restoration actions and understand why such projects are important
- Evaluate the effects of management activities on population dynamics
- Understand critical connections between environmental/landscape conditions (e.g., landform, hydrology) and biota; use this knowledge to make decisions
- Assess potential consequences of human and anthropogenic drivers of ecological change and use this knowledge to make decisions