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Location
Saratoga Springs, NY
Start Date
4-5-2009 12:00 AM
Description
Animal rights and animal protection activists have long been critics of traditional wildlife management and its damage management counterpart. They claim that wildlife personnel have over-relied on lethal control of overabundant species. Lethal control, they argue, only resolves a problem for the short-term and therefore diminishes the need for people to change their behavior to achieve long-term success. Because effective nonlethal techniques are available, wildlife managers should be encouraging and even compelling the adoption of these techniques. Wildlife managers have endeavored to blunt the criticism by encouraging the use of these techniques. Insofar as those suffering the damage are satisfied, this new approach is to be welcomed. However, wildlife managers have not considered the consequences (both intended and unintended) of these alleged nonlethal management strategies. The consequences of this oversight affect ethics and philosophy. In ethics, wildlife managers must consider that the employment of nonlethal techniques raises questions of justice to the poor and disadvantaged who frequently cannot afford the costs of implementing nonlethal control. For example, the geese evicted from a wealthy community may take up residence in a poor one whose residents lack the financial ability to hire someone to haze the geese. In philosophy, wildlife managers should consider how the exaltation of nonlethal control would undermine the public's support for consumptive uses of wildlife. In other words, if nonlethal control is so effective, why do we continue to have deer hunts? I will conclude the paper with suggestions as to how wildlife managers and wildlife damage management professionals should frame the debate so that consumptive wildlife management is duly protected.
Recommended Citation
Vantassel, S. (2009) Exposing and framing the ethical blind spots in wildlife damage management exploited by animal protectionists. In Boulanger, J. (Ed.), The Thirteenth Wildlife Damage Management Conference (250-257). Saratoga Springs, NY: Thirteenth WDM Conference.
Included in
Exposing and Framing the Ethical Blind Spots in Wildlife Damage Management Exploited by Animal Protectionists
Saratoga Springs, NY
Animal rights and animal protection activists have long been critics of traditional wildlife management and its damage management counterpart. They claim that wildlife personnel have over-relied on lethal control of overabundant species. Lethal control, they argue, only resolves a problem for the short-term and therefore diminishes the need for people to change their behavior to achieve long-term success. Because effective nonlethal techniques are available, wildlife managers should be encouraging and even compelling the adoption of these techniques. Wildlife managers have endeavored to blunt the criticism by encouraging the use of these techniques. Insofar as those suffering the damage are satisfied, this new approach is to be welcomed. However, wildlife managers have not considered the consequences (both intended and unintended) of these alleged nonlethal management strategies. The consequences of this oversight affect ethics and philosophy. In ethics, wildlife managers must consider that the employment of nonlethal techniques raises questions of justice to the poor and disadvantaged who frequently cannot afford the costs of implementing nonlethal control. For example, the geese evicted from a wealthy community may take up residence in a poor one whose residents lack the financial ability to hire someone to haze the geese. In philosophy, wildlife managers should consider how the exaltation of nonlethal control would undermine the public's support for consumptive uses of wildlife. In other words, if nonlethal control is so effective, why do we continue to have deer hunts? I will conclude the paper with suggestions as to how wildlife managers and wildlife damage management professionals should frame the debate so that consumptive wildlife management is duly protected.