Animal welfare considerations for using large carnivores and guardian dogs as vertebrate biocontrol tools against other animals

Abstract

Introducing consumptive and non-consumptive effects into food webs can have profound effects on individuals, populations and communities. This knowledge has led to the deliberate use of predation and/or fear of predation as an emerging technique for controlling wildlife. Many now advocate for the intentional use of large carnivores and livestock guardian dogs as more desirable alternatives to traditional wildlife control approaches like fencing, shooting, trapping, or poisoning. However, there has been very little consideration of the animal welfare implications of deliberately using predation as a wildlife management tool. We assess the animal welfare impacts of using dingoes, leopards and guardian dogs as biocontrol tools against wildlife in Australia and South Africa following the 'Five Domains' model commonly used to assess other wildlife management tools. Application of this model indicates that large carnivores and guardian dogs cause considerable lethal and non-lethal animal welfare impacts to the individual animals they are intended to control. These impacts are likely similar across different predator-prey systems, but are dependent on specific predator-prey combinations; combinations that result in short chases and quick kills will be rated as less harmful than those that result in long chases and protracted kills. Moreover, these impacts are typically rated greater than those caused by traditional wildlife control techniques. The intentional lethal and non-lethal harms caused by large carnivores and guardian dogs should not be ignored or dismissively assumed to be negligible. A greater understanding of the impacts they impose would benefit from empirical studies of the animal welfare outcomes arising from their use in different contexts. Potgieter et al., 2013;Fleming et al., 2014). Adding predators to multipredator multi-prey systems can produce a variety of outcomes (Hairston et al., 1960;Holt and Lawton, 1994), including profound welfare effects on other species (Fleming et al., 2012). Both the nonlethal and lethal impacts of predators cause distress and/or death to

Deconstructing compassionate conservation

“…The methods used by professionals to kill animals for conservation purposes will almost always be more humane and compassionate than the methods used by animals to kill each other (Allen et al. ).…”

“…) will initiate a new level of harm to animals living there and that harm is essential for the objective of mesopredator suppression to be achieved (Allen et al. ).…”

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

“…In contrast, there is already recognition of the value of the principles of the Animal Welfare ethic and supporting scientific approaches (Conservation Welfare) in conservation [2,17,28,40,45,46,52,85,87,91,[146][147][148]. Conflating Conservation Welfare and Compassionate Conservation is already confusing many and is likely to cause wholesale rejection of individual animal welfare as a key factor to consider in modern conservation decision-making [6,22,27].…”

“…These include excluding or deterring wild animals from valued resources or areas using physical and visual barriers or guarding dogs, relocating 'problem' individuals and applying fertility control or encouraging natural predation to keep populations in check [5,31]. But the assumptions that such methods are effective in achieving other conservation goals (e.g., preserving populations or biodiversity) or that they minimize harm to the target animals are not always supported [22,27,[85][86][87][88]. It is currently unclear how complex dilemmas between lethal control of unwanted animals to protect other animals and resources and existing peaceably without causing harm can be resolved following Compassionate Conservation [26].…”

“…Compassionate Conservationists also favour non-invasive and non-lethal strategies for achieving conservation goals. However, the assumption that these approaches invariably cause less harm to individual animals than invasive or lethal ones should be subjected to careful scrutiny [85][86][87]. Non-invasive methods can sometimes cause significant harms and, in some situations, deciding not to act can cause more harm than acting.…”