Abstract
Simple SummaryTraditional conservation strategy focuses on population-level effects. However, the rapidly evolving scientific discipline of animal welfare science, in conjunction with growing societal expectations around the value of individuals, is prompting change in conservation. Despite growing recognition of this approach in terrestrial conservation efforts, limited application of animal welfare science to marine mammals has been observed. To investigate the factors underlying this disparity, we undertook an initial “Welfare in the Wild” workshop at the 32nd European Cetacean Society conference (La Spezia, Italy) to explore expert opinion on this topic. Secondly, we analysed the English language peer-reviewed literature to assess to what extent marine mammal welfare research is reported. The results of the workshop reveal a range of views about the scientific discipline of animal welfare science, with participants’ definitions varying depending on their disciplinary expertise. Meanwhile, the extensive literature review spanning 1950 to July 2020 revealed extremely low reporting of research related to welfare in the context of marine mammals, with only 0.96% (n = 299) of all published articles on marine mammal taxa (n = 31,221) featuring the word welfare in either the title, abstract or keywords. This highlighted a need to explore differences and distil common themes. Here we suggest practical solutions to the language, translation and reception issues of this cross-disciplinary collaboration between animal welfare science and marine mammal conservation.Integrating welfare principles into conservation strategy is an emerging synthesis that encourages consideration of individual animals’ quality of life in research, policies and law. However, these principles have gained limited traction in marine compared to terrestrial animal conservation. This manuscript investigates several factors that may be contributing to this disparity. In order to gauge current understanding of animal welfare science principles by marine mammal researchers and other stakeholders, a “Welfare in the Wild” workshop was convened at the 32nd European Cetacean Society conference (La Spezia, Italy, April 2018). The workshop was attended by 30 participants who completed pre- and post-workshop surveys on animal welfare principles. The survey results highlight a range of different views about exactly what animal welfare science is and how it can be applied to marine mammals. Specifically, participants’ definitions appeared to vary depending on the type of employment or research they engaged in, indicating a need for an interdisciplinary common language. Secondly, we analysed the peer-reviewed literature in order to ascertain where marine mammal publications exploring welfare were being published. From 1950 to July 2020, a total of 299 articles featured both marine mammal taxa (one or more) and the word welfare in the title, abstract or keywords. This represents just 0.96% of the total peer-reviewed published papers on marine mammal taxa (n = 31,221) during the same period. When examining articles published within “Welfare and Ethics” (n = 6133) and “Aquatic-focused” (n = 139,352) journals, just 1.2% (n = 71) and 0.04% (n = 57) of articles, respectively, featured the word welfare when examining marine mammals. With the aim of exploring how explicitly including welfare evaluations in marine mammal research and management can benefit conservation outcomes, we framed our workshop and quantitative literature review findings to provide practical solutions to the language, translation and reception issues of this burgeoning cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Highlights
The multi-disciplinary field of animal welfare science encompasses behaviour, physiology, health and cognition and is improving our understanding of how animals cope with their surrounding environment [1,2,3]
In the remainder of this paper, we suggest solutions to the fundamental language, translation and reception issues highlighted in the literature and by our two studies, with a focus on the context of marine mammal conservation
While there are encouraging signals of increasing cross-disciplinary thinking in the welfare science and terrestrial conservation space, there has to date been limited uptake in marine mammal conservation
Summary
The multi-disciplinary field of animal welfare science encompasses behaviour, physiology, health and cognition and is improving our understanding of how animals cope with their surrounding environment [1,2,3]. This well-established scientific discipline emerged in the farm setting, diversified to laboratory and companion species, and is being rapidly applied to zoo animals [3]. Scientists have historically been proponents of one of three definitions, where either welfare is determined based on the animal’s health and biological functioning, welfare is based on whether the animal is living a “natural life”, or welfare is dictated by what the animal is feeling [6]. Welfare assessments have progressed from measuring only the resources available to the animal (“resource-based measures”) and how they might cause suffering to how positive welfare is induced and what indicators the animals show when in such states (“animal-based measures”) [12,13]
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