Accelerating development of fish and wildlife professionals will take more than training

Hastening the development of early and mid-career fish and wildlife (hereafter wildlife) professionals in state and federal agencies is an acute need. In particular, development and application of exceptional reasoning and judgment skills is critical. It would be shortsighted, however, for wildlife agency administrators to assume professional development is simply a matter of staff training. Decker et al. (2019) completed an expert panel study in 2019 to identify habits and practices of consistently high performing wildlife management professionals. Decker et al. (2019) suggest 5 clusters of competencies are characteristic of consistently high-performing wildlife professionals: being a critically inquisitive, continuous learner; practicing multi-level, integrative systems thinking; being self-disciplined; using a balanced approach; and having the emotional intelligence to interact successfully with others. Based on observations from a series of workshops with wildlife professionals, our collective professional experience, and literature review, we contend that impediments to expression of key habits/practices identified by Decker et al. (2019) exist at the group and organizational, as well as the individual level. We argue that providing individual training is necessary, but not sufficient to create work environments where wildlife professionals in state and federal wildlife agencies can develop and apply reasoning and judgment skills. Structural and cultural change in wildlife agencies would enhance effectiveness of public wildlife management. We hope this empirically-grounded commentary stimulates reflection within wildlife agencies and a commitment to organizational behavior that catalyzes professional development.