Abstract
Best practices in wildlife disease management require robust evolutionary ecological research (EER). This means not only basing management decisions on evolutionarily sound reasoning, but also conducting management in a way that actively contributes to the on-going development of that research. Because good management requires good science, and good science is ‘good’ science (i.e., effective science is often science conducted ethically), good management therefore also requires practices that accord with sound ethical reasoning. To that end, we propose a two-part framework to assist decision makers to identify ethical pitfalls of wildlife disease management. The first part consists of six values – freedom, fairness, well-being, replacement, reduction, and refinement; these values, developed for the ethical evaluation of EER practices, are also well suited for evaluating the ethics of wildlife disease management. The second part consists of a decision tree to help identify the ethically salient dimensions of wildlife disease management and to guide managers toward ethically responsible practices in complex situations. While ethical reasoning cannot be used to deduce from first principles what practices should be undertaken in every given set of circumstances, it can establish parameters that bound what sorts of practices will be acceptable or unacceptable in certain types of scenarios.
Highlights
The application of evolutionary principles to medicine, agriculture, and conservation is widespread (Ashley et al 2003; Hendry et al 2011), but the ethical implications associated with such applications are rarely considered
These values have been developed for the ethical evaluation of ecological research (EER) practices, and this study shows that they are suited for evaluating the ethical dimensions of wildlife disease management
We have advocated elsewhere (Crozier and Schulte-Hostedde 2014) that these six values are well suited for evaluating the ethical dimensions of EER, in general, and we argue here that they are ideally suited for evaluating the ethical dimensions of wildlife management
Summary
The application of evolutionary principles to medicine, agriculture, and conservation is widespread (Ashley et al 2003; Hendry et al 2011), but the ethical implications associated with such applications are rarely considered. Avoid jeopardizing locally valuable resources without consultation with, and consent from, local communities Balance the interests of various parties affected by the management practices Conduct management practices in such a way as to maximize benefits and minimize harms for individuals and their communities When possible, favor management practices that work indirectly rather than directly on wildlife populations Minimize the number of animals affected by culls and other potentially harmful or disruptive management practices Minimize the harms of invasive or disruptive management practices on wildlife dimensions of wildlife disease management and guide managers toward ethically responsible practices in complex situations. The decision tree prompts the identification of a series of ethically salient factors: (i) whether the disease is zoonotic; (ii) whether the disease threatens an endangered species; and (iii) whether the disease threatens a population on which local human communities depend Each of these factors will guide wildlife disease ecologists to take into consideration a distinct set of ethical questions, articulated through the language provided by the six core values, and with attention to adaptive management and EER. The consequences for pathogen virulence are unclear, but it is evident that the current pattern of genetic structure and diversity of M. bovis populations on the British Isles is the result of roughly a century of disease management practices including culling (Smith et al 2006)
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