Final answer:
The target population size for fish and game animals is typically a percentage of the ecosystem's carrying capacity that allows for sustainable population. Effective wildlife management strategies involve sustainable harvest levels and regulations including bag limits and seasons to maintain population balance and prevent overexploitation.
Step-by-step explanation:
The carrying capacity is the maximum number of individuals in a population that the environment can support indefinitely without being degraded. It is central to wildlife management to maintain the population at a level where it is neither too small, risking extinction, nor too large, risking environmental degradation or an eventual collapse of the population.
Overexploitation can occur when population levels are not carefully managed, leading to threats such as overhunting or overfishing. This is particularly concerning for long-lived and slow-growing organisms that are highly vulnerable to additional mortality from human activities. Efforts to manage populations typically involve restrictions such as bag limits, hunting licenses, and fishing seasons, which are aimed at keeping the population within sustainable limits. Tropical regions often face challenges in implementing such wildlife management due to a lack of protocols and enforcement.
Wildlife management strategies are designed to mitigate these issues by prescribing sustainable harvest levels that nurture population resilience by factoring in species traits and availability of resources within the habitat. This ideally maintains a balance, avoiding excessive drops in populations that can result from overharvesting.