This paper examines the history of wildlife management and its relationship with biological research in South Korea. By the mid-1970s, while national wildlife management focused mainly on hunting regulations, ornithological research was being conducted to rationalize the conservation of wild birds and mammals in the context of forestry management and protecting natural monuments. It was only after the 1990s, when Korean nature conservation policy was institutionalized, that conserving wildlife began to be considered an aspect of conserving nature in Korean. This paper argues that ornithological research has played a significant role in providing a rationale for conserving wildlife in Korea. In this paper, ornithological research in the context of governing nature is referred to as conservation ornithology, which differs from broader academic ornithological research. This paper also explores the institutionalization of nature conservation, which began in the 1990s and has led the Ministry of the Environment to collect statistics about Korean natural ecosystems in order to better conserve and manage them. Korean ornithologists are the biologists who have actively supported the Natural Environmental Survey with their expertise. This paper attempts to shed light on intersection of the history of Korean ornithology with the history of governing nature.