Hunting Can Be Good for Wildlife Populations – If Managed Correctly. This may sound counterintuitive, but reducing the number of animals in a population can help the remaining individuals to survive through the winter. “Harvesting or other means of regulating an animal population can sometimes have a positive effect by reducing the competition for food,” says Bart Peeters, a postdoctoral fellow at NTNU’s (the Norwegian University of Science and Technology) Department of Biology. This only makes sense for species limited by food availability. The results of the study have been published in the journal Ecology Letters and could prove useful in managing various species.