Adopting a utilitarian approach to culling wild animals for conservation in National Parks

Abstract

As human populations increase and become wealthier, the demand for red meat will increase. Much of this increased demand will be supplied through the traditional livestock supply chains; however, there are alternative commodities that can be used to meet some of the demand. Game meat harvested from wildlife is a growing commodity in the developed world, valued for its nutritional qualities and taste. However, there are some perverse management actions whereby wildlife, culled for conservation purposes (usually because they are deemed to be overabundant within National Parks and Protected Areas), are often not utilized as either human or pet food. In this Perspective, I highlight how the products from these culled animals in NPs are used, or not, and discuss some innovative ways in which the products are, or could be, brought into the economic and livelihood system (i.e., utilitarian conservation). These include bringing products from culled animals into the human and pet food supply chains.

Managing macropods without poisoning ecosystems

“…2017). These fragments disperse widely through the tissues of shot animals (heads in the case of macropods; Figure 1), which are left in the field by shooters (Brooker & Ridpath 1980) and are readily ingested by scavengers (Figure 2) (except in the rare cases, where culled macropods are buried; Gordon 2019).…”

Stakeholder attitudes toward the incentives used to mitigate human-elephant conflict in southern Africa: A news media content analysis

“…The mitigation of HEC is obviously of much concern to conservationists and can be broken down into three categories: biological, physical, and governance-based (Hoare, 2015). Biological mitigation may include the removal (culling or translocation) of habitual crop-raiders and the use of deterrents, such as bees (Gordon, 2019;King, Lala, Nzumu, Mwambingu, & Douglas-Hamilton, 2017). Physical mitigation includes barrier fencing and olfactory repellents.…”

Introduction to the special edition on overabundant macropods

“…Most stakeholders accept this reality and recognise that using the commercial industry is the most socially accepted and appropriate method of kangaroo management to avoid waste (Hampton et al . 2018; Gordon 2019; Hampton & Teh‐White 2019; McLeod & Hacker 2019). Pragmatic endorsement of commercial harvesting of abundant kangaroos to benefit landholders, conservation, animal welfare and carbon sequestration (Wilson & Edwards 2019) has been proposed many times by wildlife scientists (Grigg 1988; Archer 2002; Read 2003) but has not yet led to clearer management goals or improved outcomes.…”