(59) This Isn’t Your Father’s Wildlife Habitat Evaluation Program

Session: Concurrent session C5:  Youth

The Wildlife Habitat Evaluation Program (WHEP) provides an excellent opportunity to connect the younger generations and the outdoor world while offering an exciting, challenging, and educational wildlife-based program.  WHEP is a 4-H program and wildlife judging contest designed to teach youth 8-19 years of age about the fundamentals of wildlife science and management.  Since its creation in the early 1980s, WHEP has become the largest and most visible 4-H wildlife program in the United States.  Young adults learn about wildlife habitat requirements, endangered species, and wildlife damage management.  WHEP also introduces participants to different types of wildlife habitat, wildlife, and management practices throughout the country.  Each participant’s experience in WHEP culminates in a wildlife judging competition at the state, and possibly, national level.  WHEP as a program is growing and adapting.  In 2007, a national committee of wildlife and fisheries extension specialists completed a total revision of the national WHEP education manual and contest – the first such revision since 1994.  This presentation will provide a brief history and benefits of WHEP, and then detail the changes to the manual and contest.  Suggestions for involvement in WHEP by extension professionals as well as others will conclude the presentation.  
    
David Drake
Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology
1630 Linden Dr.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, WI, 53706
Phone: (608) 890-0445
Fax: (608) 262-6499
ddrake2@wisc.edu