The Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology offers an education with an emphasis on basic sciences and principles of wildlife ecology and resource management, with the goal for students to develop responsible citizenship and a sound training as a professional wildlife biologist, a professional fisheries biologist, or a conservation biologist. A minor in Fisheries is available to non-majors interested in a fisheries career. Students are exposed to wildlife issues in a diversity of ecological systems, in national parks, wildlife refuges, state management areas, and on private land. Maine offers diverse opportunities to study wildlife in a variety of natural environments ranging from the coast with its sea birds, marine mammals and eagles, to the more mountainous Northern Boreal Forest occupied by moose, black bears, loons, red-backed salamanders, brook trout, and salmon.  Maine also has thousands of lakes and ponds and 30,000 miles of rivers and streams.