Compassionate conservation

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The Eastern gray squirrel is considered an invasive species in some countries. Advocates for compassionate conservation argue that killing individual animals like this is unnecessary. Eastern Grey Squirrel.jpg
The Eastern gray squirrel is considered an invasive species in some countries. Advocates for compassionate conservation argue that killing individual animals like this is unnecessary.

Compassionate conservation is a discipline combining the fields of conservation and animal welfare. Historically, these two fields have been considered separate [1] and sometimes contradictory to each other. [2] The proposed ethical principles of compassionate conservation are: "first do no harm, individuals matter, inclusivity, and peaceful coexistence". [3]

Contents

Compassionate conservationists argue that the conservation movement uses the preservation of species, populations and ecosystems as a measure of success, without explicit concern given to the welfare and intrinsic value of individual animals. [4] They argue instead, that compassion for all sentient beings should be what guides conservation actions [5] and claim that the killing of animals in the name of conservation goals is unnecessary, as these same objectives can be achieved without killing. [6]

Compassionate conservation has been a subject of criticism by some conservationists, who consider the discipline to be harmful to the goals of conservation. [7] [8]

History

The international wildlife charity Born Free Foundation, which advocates for the well-being of individual wild animals, used the phrase "compassionate conservation" as the name for a Oxford-based symposium it hosted in 2010. [9] The Centre for Compassionate Conservation was created, in 2013, at the University of Technology, Sydney. [10] Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation, a collection of essays edited by compassionate conservation advocate Marc Bekoff, was published in the same year. [11]

In the years since, further conferences have been held on the topic and advocates have published multiple articles in conservation journals. [9]

Criticism

Compassionate conservation has been called "seriously flawed" by certain conservationists, who argue that its implementation is impractical and could lead to negative outcomes for wildlife, ecosystems, humans, [7] and native biodiversity. [8] Others argue that the "do no harm" approach goes "too far" and that put into practice, it would not necessarily lead to positive outcomes for the welfare of individual animals. [12] Andrea S. Griffin et al. argue that compassionate conservation's focus on empathy "is subject to significant biases and that inflexible adherence to moral rules can result in a 'do nothing' approach". [8]

Several conservation management approaches supported by compassionate conservation as an alternative to lethal control have been scrutinised experimentally or observationally. For example, trap–neuter–return management of feral cat populations is proposed as an alternative to lethal methods such as shooting or baiting. However, research has not found TNR to be an effective means of controlling feral cat populations. [13] [14] [15] [16]

Similarly, the use of wildlife contraceptives has been proposed as a non-lethal method for managing overpopulation in native wildlife species. However, attempts to apply this approach—such as the control of overabundant Koala populations on Kangaroo Island in South Australia—have not been successful due to logistical and cost-effectiveness barriers. Alternative compassionate approaches such as wildlife fertility control were also unsuccessful. As with trap–neuter–return programs, nonlethal reproductive management of a subset of a population often results in compensatory increases in reproductive success among untreated individuals. [17] Translocation to lower-abundance habitats was also not successful because the translocated individuals often died, negating any "compassionate" benefits of the approach. [18]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nature conservation</span> Movement to protect the biosphere

Nature conservation is the moral philosophy and conservation movement focused on protecting species from extinction, maintaining and restoring habitats, enhancing ecosystem services, and protecting biological diversity. A range of values underlie conservation, which can be guided by biocentrism, anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, and sentientism, environmental ideologies that inform ecocultural practices and identities. There has recently been a movement towards evidence-based conservation which calls for greater use of scientific evidence to improve the effectiveness of conservation efforts. As of 2018 15% of land and 7.3% of the oceans were protected. Many environmentalists set a target of protecting 30% of land and marine territory by 2030. In 2021, 16.64% of land and 7.9% of the oceans were protected. The 2022 IPCC report on climate impacts and adaptation, underlines the need to conserve 30% to 50% of the Earth's land, freshwater and ocean areas – echoing the 30% goal of the U.N.'s Convention on Biodiversity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal welfare</span> Well-being of non-human animals

Animal welfare is the well-being of non-human animals. Formal standards of animal welfare vary between contexts, but are debated mostly by animal welfare groups, legislators, and academics. Animal welfare science uses measures such as longevity, disease, immunosuppression, behavior, physiology, and reproduction, although there is debate about which of these best indicate animal welfare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Habitat conservation</span> Management practice for protecting types of environments

Habitat conservation is a management practice that seeks to conserve, protect and restore habitats and prevent species extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range. It is a priority of many groups that cannot be easily characterized in terms of any one ideology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Game reserve</span> Area of land set aside for controlled hunting wild animals

A game reserve is a large area of land where wild animals are hunted in a controlled way for sport. If hunting is prohibited, a game reserve may be considered a nature reserve; however, the focus of a game reserve is specifically the animals (fauna), whereas a nature reserve is also, if not equally, concerned with all aspects of native biota of the area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trap–neuter–return</span> Strategy for controlling feral animal populations

Trap–neuter–return (TNR), also known as trap–neuter–release, is a controversial method that attempts to manage populations of feral cats. The process involves live-trapping the cats, having them neutered, ear-tipped for identification, and, if possible, vaccinated, then releasing them back into the outdoors. If the location is deemed unsafe or otherwise inappropriate, the cats may be relocated to other appropriate areas. Often, friendly adults and kittens young enough to be easily socialized are retained and placed for adoption. Feral cats cannot be socialized, shun most human interaction and do not fare well in confinement, so they are not retained. Cats suffering from severe medical problems such as terminal, contagious, or untreatable illnesses or injuries are often euthanized.

Population viability analysis (PVA) is a species-specific method of risk assessment frequently used in conservation biology. It is traditionally defined as the process that determines the probability that a population will go extinct within a given number of years. More recently, PVA has been described as a marriage of ecology and statistics that brings together species characteristics and environmental variability to forecast population health and extinction risk. Each PVA is individually developed for a target population or species, and consequently, each PVA is unique. The larger goal in mind when conducting a PVA is to ensure that the population of a species is self-sustaining over the long term.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feral cat</span> Unowned or untamed domestic cat in the outdoors

A feral cat or a stray cat is an unowned domestic cat that lives outdoors and avoids human contact; it does not allow itself to be handled or touched, and usually remains hidden from humans. Feral cats may breed over dozens of generations and become an aggressive local apex predator in urban, savannah and bushland environments. Some feral cats may become more comfortable with people who regularly feed them, but even with long-term attempts at socialization, they usually remain aloof and are most active after dusk. Of the 700 million cats in the world, an estimated 480 million are feral.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wildlife management</span> Management and control of wildlife populations

Wildlife management is the management process influencing interactions among and between wildlife, its habitats and people to achieve predefined impacts. It attempts to balance the needs of wildlife with the needs of people using the best available science. Wildlife management can include wildlife conservation, population control, gamekeeping, wildlife contraceptive and pest control.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wildlife trade</span> Worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of wildlife

Wildlife trade refers to the products that are derived from non-domesticated animals or plants usually extracted from their natural environment or raised under controlled conditions. It can involve the trade of living or dead individuals, tissues such as skins, bones or meat, or other products. Legal wildlife trade is regulated by the United Nations' Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which currently has 184 member countries called Parties. Illegal wildlife trade is widespread and constitutes one of the major illegal economic activities, comparable to the traffic of drugs and weapons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Umbrella species</span> Species protected to aid further species

Umbrella species are species selected for making conservation-related decisions, typically because protecting these species indirectly protects the many other species that make up the ecological community of its habitat. Species conservation can be subjective because it is hard to determine the status of many species. The umbrella species is often either a flagship species whose conservation benefits other species or a keystone species which may be targeted for conservation due to its impact on an ecosystem. Umbrella species can be used to help select the locations of potential reserves, find the minimum size of these conservation areas or reserves, and to determine the composition, structure, and processes of ecosystems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wildlife corridor</span> Connecting wild territories for animals

A wildlife corridor, also known as a habitat corridor, or green corridor, is an designated area that connects wildlife populations that have been separated by human activities or structures, such as development, roads, or land clearings. These corridors enable movement of individuals between populations, which helps to prevent negative effects of inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity, often caused by genetic drift, that can occur in isolated populations. Additionally, corridors support the re-establishment of populations that may have been reduced or wiped out due to random events like fires or disease. They can also mitigate some of the severe impacts of habitat fragmentation, a result of urbanization that divides habitat areas and restricts animal movement. Habitat fragmentation from human development poses an increasing threat to biodiversity, and habitat corridors help to reduce its harmful effects.

Alley Cat Rescue is an international nonprofit organization, headquartered in Mount Rainier, Maryland, that works to protect cats using trap–neuter–return for community cats; rescue, and neuter before adoption; promoting compassionate, non-lethal population control; and by providing national and international resources for cat caretakers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conservation grazing</span> Use of animals to graze areas like nature reserves to maintain habitats

Conservation grazing or targeted grazing is the use of semi-feral or domesticated grazing livestock to maintain and increase the biodiversity of natural or semi-natural grasslands, heathlands, wood pasture, wetlands and many other habitats. Conservation grazing is generally less intensive than practices such as prescribed burning, but still needs to be managed to ensure that overgrazing does not occur. The practice has proven to be beneficial in moderation in restoring and maintaining grassland and heathland ecosystems. Conservation or monitored grazing has been implemented into regenerative agriculture programs to restore soil and overall ecosystem health of current working landscapes. The optimal level of grazing and grazing animal will depend on the goal of conservation. Different levels of grazing, alongside other conservation practices, can be used to induce desired results.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Bekoff</span> American biologist (born 1945)

Marc Bekoff is an American biologist, ethologist, behavioral ecologist and writer. He is Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder and cofounder of the Jane Goodall Institute of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and cofounder of the Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots program.

Population control is the practice of artificially maintaining the size of any population. It simply refers to the act of limiting the size of an animal population so that it remains manageable, as opposed to the act of protecting a species from excessive rates of extinction, which is referred to as conservation biology.

Cats are a popular pet in New Zealand. Cat ownership is occasionally raised as a controversial conservation issue due to the predation of endangered species, such as birds and lizards, by feral cats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cat predation on wildlife</span> Interspecies animal behavior

Cat predation on wildlife is the result of the natural instincts and behavior of both feral and owned house cats to hunt small prey, including wildlife. Some people view this as a desirable trait, such as in the case of barn cats and other cats kept for the intended purpose of pest control in rural settings; but scientific evidence does not support the popular use of cats to control urban rat populations, and ecologists oppose their use for this purpose because of the disproportionate harm they do to native wildlife. As an invasive species and predator, they do considerable ecological damage.

In biology, overabundant species refers to an excessive number of individuals and occurs when the normal population density has been exceeded. Increase in animal populations is influenced by a variety of factors, some of which include habitat destruction or augmentation by human activity, the introduction of invasive species and the reintroduction of threatened species to protected reserves.

Wildlife endocrinology is a branch of endocrinology which deals with the study of the endocrine system in vertebrates as well as invertebrates. It deals with hormone analysis which helps understand the basic physiological functions such as metabolic activity, reproduction, health and well-being of the organism. Hormones can be measured via multiple biological matrices such as blood, urine, faeces, hair and saliva, the choice of which depends upon the type of information required, ease of sample collection, assays available to analyse the sample and species difference in hormone metabolism and excretion. Non-invasive samples are preferred for wild ranging animals whereas, both invasive as well as non-invasive samples are used to study captive animals.

Conservation welfare is a proposed discipline which would focus on establishing the commonalities between conservation and animal welfare and the formation of a foundation upon which the two disciplines can collaborate to further their respective objectives. It would be based on the principles of Peter Singer's utilitarianism and similarly to compassionate conservation, its focus would diverge from environmental ethics in that it concentrates on the welfare of individual animals, rather than species, ecosystems or populations. It has been argued that conservation welfare would be distinct from compassionate conservation because the two disciplines have differing conceptions of the harms experienced by wild animals and that while conservation welfare would seek to engage with conservation scientists and integrate animal welfare into existing conservation practices, compassionate conservation may lack the capacity to "guide decision-making in complex or novel situations."

References

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  2. Gray, Jenny (2018-08-31). "Challenges of Compassionate Conservation". Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science. 21 (sup1): 34–42. doi: 10.1080/10888705.2018.1513840 . ISSN   1088-8705. PMID   30325231.
  3. Katz, Tristan (2024-11-01). "Taking natural harms seriously in compassionate conservation". Biological Conservation. 299: 110791. doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110791 . ISSN   0006-3207.
  4. Ramp, Daniel; Bekoff, Marc (2015-03-01). "Compassion as a Practical and Evolved Ethic for Conservation". BioScience. 65 (3): 323–327. doi: 10.1093/biosci/biu223 . hdl: 10453/34122 . ISSN   0006-3568.
  5. Wallach, Arian D.; Batavia, Chelsea; Bekoff, Marc; Alexander, Shelley; Baker, Liv; Ben‐Ami, Dror; Boronyak, Louise; Cardilini, Adam P. A.; Carmel, Yohay; Celermajer, Danielle; Coghlan, Simon (2020). "Recognizing animal personhood in compassionate conservation". Conservation Biology. 34 (5): 1097–1106. doi: 10.1111/cobi.13494 . ISSN   1523-1739. PMC   7540678 . PMID   32144823.
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  13. Coe, Seraiah T; Elmore, Jared A. (23 December 2021). "Free-ranging domestic cat abundance and sterilization percentage following five years of a trap–neuter–return program". Wildlife Biology. 2021. doi: 10.2981/wlb.00799 . S2CID   233938210.
  14. Roebling, Allison D; Johnson, Dana (June 2014). "Rabies Prevention and Management of Cats in the Context of Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate, Release Programs". Zoonoses Public Health. 61 (4): 290–296. doi:10.1111/zph.12070. PMC   5120395 . PMID   23859607 . Retrieved 11 March 2024.
  15. Franzen, Jonathan (25 December 2023). "How the "No Kill" Movement Betrays its Name". The New Yorker. Retrieved 11 March 2024.
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  17. Duka, Toni; Masters, Pip (December 2005). "Confronting a tough issue: Fertility control and translocation for over‐abundant Koalas on Kangaroo Island, South Australia". Ecological Management & Restoration. 6 (3): 172–181. doi:10.1111/j.1442-8903.2005.00234.x. ISSN   1442-7001.
  18. Watters, Freyja; Ramsey, David; Molsher, Robyn; Cassey, Phillip (2021-09-10). "Breeding dynamics of overabundant koala (". Wildlife Research. 48 (7): 663–672. doi:10.1071/WR20162. ISSN   1035-3712.

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