Wildlife in U.S. Cities: Managing Unwanted Animals

Abstract

Simple SummaryWild animals are increasingly adapting to living in urbanizing environments, even as urban living has become the dominant human life style. This leads to greater opportunities to experience and enjoy wildlife, but also to increases in the kind and frequency of human-wildlife conflicts. Conflicts occur not only with species deemed to be perennial pests or nuisances, but situationally and episodically with others that are valued and esteemed. Regardless of how we view wild animals with whom we have conflicts, all deserve moral consideration and humane treatment. Issues in coexisting with urban wildlife are reviewed here.AbstractConflicts between people and wild animals in cities are undoubtedly as old as urban living itself. In the United States it is only of late, however, that many of the species now found in cities have come to live there. The increasing kind and number of human-wildlife conflicts in urbanizing environments makes it a priority that effective and humane means of conflict resolution be found. The urban public wants conflicts with wildlife resolved humanely, but needs to know what the alternative management approaches are, and what ethical standards should guide their use. This paper examines contemporary urban wildlife control in the United States with a focus on the moral concerns this raises. Much of the future for urban wildlife will depend on reform in governance, but much as well will depend on cultural changes that promote greater respect and understanding for wild animals and the biotic communities of which they and we are both a part.

International consensus principles for ethical wildlife control

“…For over a decade, governments, academics, and animal protection organizations have proposed approaches to guide ethical decision making in wildlife control (Jones ; Humane Vertebrate Pest Control Working Group ; Littin et al. ; PestSmart ; Hadidian ). However, the different approaches, plus a lack of standards in many jurisdictions, show a clear need for broadly based guidance that incorporates international perspectives (Littin & O'Connor ).…”

A moral panic over cats

“…). We caution against instrumentalizing such a principle, which focuses on harm reduction, precisely to categorically justify harmful interventions against cats, especially in the face of evidenced social, ecological, ethical, and effectiveness concerns (Littin & Mellor ; Littin ; Hadidian ; Hadidian ; Doherty & Ritchie ).…”

“…Third, the ecological and public-health issues do not touch on the ethics and policy problems that are core to understanding the dispute over cats-grappling with the intrinsic value of all animals (wild and domestic) in conservation (Midgley 1998;Santiago-Ávila et al 2018); balancing moral obligations to both native and non-native species (Lynn 1998;Lynn 2018); learning how to coexist with wild and domestic animals across a range of urban to wild landscapes (Hadidian et al 2006;Hadidian 2015); changing paradigms of conservation that encourage nonlethal methods of management (Ramp & Bekoff 2015;Wallach et al 2018;Treves et al 2019); making questionable or missing moral justifications for introducing disease (Berthier et al 2000) and indiscriminate poisons (Doherty & Algar 2015) to control cats; considering the role of values and ethics as drivers of policy disputes, such as those over cats (Shrader-Frechette & McCoy 1994;Lynn 2006); and considering the serious theoretical and ethical debate within invasion biology over its presuppositions and value judgments about introduced species (Chew & Hamilton 2011;Wallach et al 2015;Munro et al 2019). Both conservation and animal protection communities must be willing to grapple with these value-laden issues directly.…”

“…We welcome calls for the adoption of a precautionary approach, when it involves the implementation of mitigation measures that are not harmful, and monitoring and adaptive management (Calver et al 2011). We caution against instrumentalizing such a principle, which focuses on harm reduction, precisely to categorically justify harmful interventions against cats, especially in the face of evidenced social, ecological, ethical, and effectiveness concerns (Littin & Mellor 2005;Littin 2010;Hadidian 2012;Hadidian 2015;Doherty & Ritchie 2017).…”

Ethical management of wildlife. Lethal versus nonlethal control of white‐tailed deer

“…Perceived "excess" or "chronically abundant" whitetailed deer have become a major challenge for natural resource managers and city councils in urban, suburban and public park settings in the United States, as ornamental landscaping makes these areas inviting, while predators are few (Hadidian, 2015). Traditionally, deer populations have been managed by lethal control in the form of sport hunting with guns or bows, or sharpshooting to obtain targeted culls (Urbanek, Nielsen, Davenport, & Woodson, 2012).…”