In the mid part of the 19th century a  wildlife conservation effort was born that would later become known as the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. This model is based on seven principals or tenets.

• Wildlife as Public Trust Resources
• Elimination of Markets for Game
• Allocation of Wildlife by Law
• Wildlife Should Only be Killed for a Legitimate Purpose
• Wildlife is Considered an International Resource
• Science is the Proper Tool for the Discharge of Wildlife Policy
• Democracy of Hunting

By the early part of the 20th century with wildlife populations in great decline, the seeds of the NAMWC were sewn, and by the mid part of the 20th century the rewards of that model were being realized with flourishing wildlife populations, many of which had been brought back from the brink of extinction. We again find our wildlife in great decline. Beginning in the early 1980s wildlife of the Western United States began to experience wide scale episodic die offs and declines. Some of the sharpest of these declines being realized in the early 1990s. These synchronous declines where experienced widely across large areas, and by many species. The last 30 years have been punctuated by sharp wildlife declines, followed by subpar recoveries, or stagnating populations, followed by more declines. Moose, deer, bighorn sheep, antelope, trout, and a myriad of other species have all followed the same course of the last 30 years. A common denominator of all these declines has been mineral deficiencies, and disease. Western Wildlife ecology seeks to better understand the nature of these declines, in an effort to find solutions to turn the last 30 years of decline.