Welfare aspects of vertebrate pest control and culling: ranking control techniques for humaneness

Abstract

The management of vertebrate pests depends on the use of traps, pesticides, repellents and other methods, each of which can cause varying levels of pain and other negative experiences to animals. Vertebrate pest control is essential for managing the impacts of unwanted or over-abundant animals on human and animal health, ecological balance and economic interests. As the need for this management is unlikely to diminish over time, a framework has been developed for assessing the humaneness of each technique by considering their negative impacts on animal welfare so that these can be included in decision-making about the selection of techniques for a specific control operation. This information can also support evidence-based regulations directed at managing such animal welfare impacts. In this paper, the authors discuss this assessment framework, briefly review two assessments conducted using the framework and discuss ways in which Competent Authorities and others can use it and other means to improve animal welfare in vertebrate pest management.

Control of invasive rats on islands and priorities for future action

“…Littin et al. () propose a decision‐making process to select the control technique based on the technique's efficiency and humaneness. Campbell et al.…”

I Am a Compassionate Conservation Welfare Scientist: Considering the Theoretical and Practical Differences Between Compassionate Conservation and Conservation Welfare

“…Of course, in reality, this kind of calculation is complex and difficult (if not impossible) to make, and there is diverse opinion about which parties are 'considerable' and whose interests should be given greatest weight in the calculation. Thus, the principle is usually applied in practice by trying to minimize harms and maximize benefits [35,51], and in order to even attempt this, the harms and benefits must be understood and somehow quantified [8,17,28,52]. Sometimes developing this understanding causes harm to some animals, e.g., during wildlife research [44,47,53,54].…”

“…While inadequate for many Compassionate Conservation proponents, this more moderate 'incremental improvement' approach may gain more traction with traditional conservationists [6,27,28,76] and thus generate large scale change more quickly. My own aim, and that of many other conservation welfare scientists, is to contribute to the development of new conservation paradigms that give greater weight to animal welfare alongside factors such as efficacy and cost when making decisions [17,39,41,46,52,77,78]. This may mean that some conservation activities have to be modified or that some activities cannot be undertaken until less harmful methods are developed [2].…”

Unbiased Sampling for Rodents and Other Small Mammals: How to Overcome Neophobia Through Use of an Electronic-Triggered Live Trap—A Preliminary Test

“…Safe, random trapping of live animals is important for research (Calhoun, 1962;Lockard, 1968;Stryjek and Pisula, 2008;Stryjek et al, 2012) and the pest control industry (Macdonald et al, 1999;Mason and Littin, 2003;Littin et al, 2014) alike. However, the use of traditional trap designs has compromised our ability to collect truly random samples of a given species (Mitchell, 1976;Stryjek and Pisula, 2008;Stryjek et al, 2012).…”