Wildlife is an integral part of ecosystems including forests and other non-forested lands. Forests have considerable indigenous and cultural heritage values. Wildlife management combines entitlements and obligations of involved parties. The main objects of wildlife management are game animals and their habitats. The 31^st IUGB Congress was held in Brussels, Belgium on 28-30 August 2013 under the headline ‘Diversity in Wildlife Management – Objectives and Tools’. The Congress as the worldwide forum for game biologists had assembled 297 participants from 34 countries. The main issues of the Congress showed that as far as applied methodologies are concerned, the straightforward wildlife counting and monitoring may no longer be sufficient. Aims and objectives of the clear management to be set right from the beginning are required, with the emphasis not only on the game species concerned but also its habitat, the whole ecosystem and the wider environment. In the wildlife management and conservation programmes, the application of molecular biology techniques and genetic research is increasingly growing. Historically and culturally, IUGB has focused primarily on Europe, but it became obvious that there are indeed many similarities between Europe and North America in the domain of wildlife management and research, and closer cooperation between IUGB and The Wildlife Society (TWS) can only be beneficial. It is likely that such cooperation will be developed in the near future and that at the next Congress in Mexico, participation from southern hemisphere countries will also be improved.