Abstract
The Principles of the 3Rs apply to animal use in research regardless where the research is conducted. In wildlife research, particularly research on wild birds, 3R implementation lags behind research using laboratory, farm, or pet animals. Raised 3R awareness and more field-adapted techniques and protocols are expected to improve the situation. Unpredictable access to animals entices the wildlife researcher to make the most of each caught animal, leading to potential over-use, and violation of the 3Rs. In this study, I statistically screened an existing set of Bean Goose biometric data for the presence of redundant measurements. The results show that it was possible to distinguish between the fabalis and rossicus subspecies (the original aim of the measurements) with fewer measurements (2 vs. 17). Avoidance of the redundant measurements was estimated to reduce both handling time and welfare impact with c. 80%. A robust scheme, supported by an R-script, is presented for continuously weeding out redundant measurements. This scheme is potentially applicable for measurement protocols in any wildlife study, and thus, contributes to the implementation of the principals of the 3Rs in wildlife research in general.
Highlights
Unlike in research using laboratory and farm/domestic animals, access to animals in wildlife research is often highly unpredictable
The other 15 variables contributed virtually nothing and should be considered redundant in this context. If these had been omitted from the measurement protocols, the 262 Bean Geese behind this study would have experienced an estimated reduction of 82% in time
0.880 −0.878 quantify the welfare impact of reduced measurement protocols, but the invasiveness scores of individual measurements (Table 8) suggest that some reductions are likely to have a greater impact than others
Summary
Unlike in research using laboratory and farm/domestic animals, access to animals in wildlife research is often highly unpredictable. The use of the individual animal beyond the core purpose of the study could be motivated with e.g., data sharing and bio-banking in an a posteriori manner. How does such opportunistic sampling behavior match the legal and moral requirements of the use of animals in research?. Formulated by Russell and Burch [4], the Principles of the 3Rs (“the 3Rs”) prescribe a continuous process aiming to Replace live animals with other study systems (e.g., cell cultures or computer models), to Reduce the numbers of animals used without jeopardizing the quality of the research and, Refine the conditions for the individual animals truly needed for the experiment. The 3Rs apply independently from legal definitions of “animals used in experiments and teaching” and the requirements for approval by an Ethical Committee
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