Conservation, Marine Mammals, And Animal Welfare

It may seem strange to the average layperson, but the worlds of wildlife conservation and animal welfare are quite separate in the minds of many researchers and scientists. For the most part, the difference can be seen as a philosophical one: conservationists see their work as scientifically driven, while they view animal welfare as concerned with individual animal and being more emotionally motivated. As such, many conservation scientists seem to hold to the idea that anthropogenic impacts (that is, human-caused problems) only really have biological significance on wildlife if there are “population-level effects”. In this view, management actions don’t need to be taken unless the number of individuals affected reaches some kind of level or criteria, regardless of how much individual animals are impacted or suffer. What’s more, when conservationists do this kind of calculus, they tend to look at mortality figures, versus trying to measure quality of life impacts on wildlife.

This paper aims to make a case for the expansion of conservation concerns to include a broader concept of animal welfare, noting that just because the population impacts of a given activity are not immediately lethal, they may compromise individual and population level welfare with residual effects. “There is a clear scientific basis,” the researchers say, “for managing human activities not only to sustain populations but also to minimise welfare impacts on individual animals.” To elaborate on this position, they use to case studies / examples of marine mammal bycatch in commercial fisheries, and the effects of sound from oil and gas exploration on marine mammals. To begin with, though, the authors outline the ways that conservation is a scientific practice and then note ways that animal welfare is supported by science as well.

Moving into their case studies, they begin by discussing the bycatch of whales in commercial fishing operations, which we focus on here in particular. They note that the entanglement of whales in fishing gear is one of the most egregious abuse of wild animals in the modern world, and yet “practical steps to reduce incidental capture of marine mammals in commercial fishing operations have largely been driven by concerns over population-level impacts rather than individual animal welfare.” The problem is generally hidden from public view, and it has been traditional (ie. population-level) conservation concerns that have driven action on the subject.

As such, both North America and Europe have set goals of zero bycatch – however, there is a discrepancy between the publicly stated goals and management actions that are actually undertaken, and the authors note this may be because of the traditional management approach. Instead, they suggest that truly considering animal welfare would mean moving to a situation of taking action, not just when certain bycatch thresholds are exceeded, but more continuously, to steadily reduce impacts. They note a further part of the problem is the response rate from when a problem is detected to when action is taken involves a lag; if “prompt action was taken on welfare grounds” when problems first became apparent, a good deal of mortality could be averted. What’s more, the authors note that if welfare was taken seriously, it could have stopped fisheries from “developing in a way that poses such a high entanglement risk but is now very difficult to reverse.”

This paper is an excellent resource for animal advocates who already hold such an holistic view of animal issues; likewise, it serves as an important resource for animal advocates who are unaware of this tension in conservation to inform themselves. The idea that wildlife conservation efforts should take into account whole populations as well as individuals may seem intuitive to many animal advocates. However, many advocates who have seriously dipped their toes into the conservation world will know just how much of a struggle advocating for individuals may be. The idea that we should embed animal welfare within the conservation framework, “where it logically belongs,” may seem like a given, but to many it isn’t. For conservation advocates, this paper offers an opportunity to expand their understanding of animal welfare, and to open their minds – and work – to the ways that animal welfare may make their work more holistically effective. “Politicians, bureaucrats, conservation biologists, and others who claim that conservation policy and practice is based on the best available science can no longer justify focusing their concerns and efforts solely on populations,” the authors conclude emphatically, “to the exclusion of individual animals and indeed ecological communities.”