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Unveiling The Nexus: The Interdependence Of Animal Welfare, Environment & Sustainable Development, World Federation For Animals (Wfa)

Nexus – UNEP – Animal Welfare, Environment, Sustainable Development

On 2 March 2022, the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) adopted the Animal Welfare - Environment - Sustainable Development Nexus Resolution. In this resolution, UNEA acknowledged that "animal welfare can contribute to addressing environmental challenges". UNEA further acknowledged animal welfare's contribution to "promoting the One Health approach and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals." To understand these links, UNEA requested the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to analyse and produce a report for the next convening of UNEA on the nexus between animal welfare, the environment, and sustainable development. "Unveiling the Nexus: The interdependence of animal welfare, environment & sustainable development" illuminates the …

Nexus Between Animal Welfare, Environment, And Sustainable Development: Resource Document, Wellbeing International

Nexus – UNEP – Animal Welfare, Environment, Sustainable Development

This Resource Document has been developed to explore the Nexus (links) between Animal Welfare, the Environment, and Sustainable Development. The document includes relevant citations and reports addressing the topics encompassed by the Nexus. It will be maintained as a “living document” (subject to revision) in the WellBeing International Studies Repository. The original document and subsequent revisions will be kept in the Repository to provide a record of the changes.

Challenging Our Conception Of Wildness, Elodie Massiot

Animal Sentience

Baker & Winkler (2020) point out the entanglement among free-living elephants, captive elephants, and humans in the elephant tourism industry. Where all living beings – captive and free-living – are more or less affected by human presence or activity, the binary notion of wild and captive, and in situ and ex situ conservation, becomes inadequate. B&W challenge our concept of wildness – and hence of rewilding – and our level of intervention in this wildness of which we are a component.

Wildlife Health Systems, Lee Skerratt

Animal Sentience

Wildlife health systems aim to ensure that all animal life is healthy and resilient. They protect biodiversity and ecosystem services and ensure that the risk of spillover of pathogens is mitigated. These systems are flexible, multidisciplinary and cross-sectorial. They can manage a variety of threats to life that arise in different communities and cultures. Very small investments are required to ensure that wildlife health systems function effectively.

Game Theory And Artificial Intelligence In Just Preservation, David L. Dowe, Nader Chmait

Animal Sentience

We humans can show presumption, arrogance and many dubious traits. By virtue of being land-dwelling, dexterous, relatively intelligent, and having good communication hardware and (good) fortune, we have for recent millennia largely had dominion of our planet. Yet humans often do not treat themselves (let alone other species) particularly well. Treves et al.’s idea of a multispecies justice system — not “prioritizing humans” but “finding practical ways to work within human systems” — invites consideration.

New Approach To Health And The Environment To Avoid Future Pandemics, Serge Morand

Animal Sentience

This commentary expands Wiebers & Feigin’s target article by pinpointing how declining wildlife, expanding livestock and globalisation contribute to the increase in epidemics of zoonotic diseases, the COVID-19 crisis and future health crises. Epidemics and the emergence of zoonoses are manifestations of dysfunctional links with animals, both wild and domestic, requiring a new approach to health and the environment.

Just Preservation, Trusteeship And Multispecies Justice, Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, Adrian Treves, William Lynn

Animal Sentience

We are grateful to all the commentators who engaged with our target article. Some commentators have offered important insights into our proposed design and methods for legally intervening on behalf of futurity. Others have focused on theoretical considerations central to our proposal for multispecies justice and trusteeship. All have inspired modifications and further elaboration of our initial proposal. In this Response, we engage with the commentaries, integrating their suggestions, striving for convergence and complementarity, but also discussing points of divergence with our proposed framework where necessary. There is substantial overlap in the points of view of the three co-authors, but …

The Intrinsic Value Of Nature, Joanna E. Lambert

Animal Sentience

Treves et al. explain the need to preserve the rights of nonhuman species, human youth, and future generations. Although conservation biology has claimed to have an intrinsic valuation ethic since its inception in the 1980s, many aspects of the field have taken a decidedly anthropocentric and instrumentalist trajectory. This has important consequences for conservation-related policy and practice at all scales: local, regional, and global.

Just Preservation, Adrian Treves, Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, William S. Lynn

Animal Sentience

We are failing to protect the biosphere. Novel views of conservation, preservation, and sustainability are surfacing in the wake of consensus about our failures to prevent extinction or slow climate change. We argue that the interests and well-being of non-humans, youth, and future generations of both human and non-human beings (futurity) have too long been ignored in consensus-based, anthropocentric conservation. Consensus-based stakeholder-driven processes disadvantage those absent or without a voice and allow current adult humans and narrow, exploitative interests to dominate decisions about the use of nature over its preservation for futurity of all life. We propose that authentically non-anthropocentric …

Identification Of The Rainbowfish In Lake Eacham Using Dna Sequencing, Culum Brown, Yagiz Aksoy, Hilal Varinli, Michael Gillings

Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection

The Lake Eacham rainbowfish (Melanotaenia eachamensis) was once thought to be confined to its type locality within the Lake Eacham World Heritage National Park. M. eachamensis disappeared from the lake following the translocation of several species into the lake and the species was pronounced extinct in the wild in 1987. In a 2007 survey we noticed that rainbowfish were present in the lake once again. We used a molecular marker to identify these fish and the likely source population. Analysis of the D-loop region of mitochondrial DNA revealed that the species now present in the lake is Melanotaenia splendida, and …

Human Predators Outpace Other Agents Of Trait Change In The Wild, Chris T. Darimont, Stephanie M. Carlson, Michael T. Kinnison, Paul C. Paquet, Thomas E. Reimchen, Christopher C. Wilmers

Nonindigenous Pests and Biological Invasions Collection

The observable traits of wild populations are continually shaped and reshaped by the environment and numerous agents of natural selection, including predators. In stark contrast with most predators, humans now typically exploit high proportions of prey populations and target large, reproductive-aged adults. Consequently, organisms subject to consistent and strong ‘harvest selection’ by fishers, hunters, and plant harvesters may be expected to show particularly rapid and dramatic changes in phenotype. However, a comparison of the rate at which phenotypic changes in exploited taxa occurs relative to other systems has never been undertaken. Here, we show that average phenotypic changes in 40 …

Spawning Salmon Disrupt Trophic Coupling Between Wolves And Ungulate Prey In Coastal British Columbia, Chris T. Darimont, Paul C. Paquet, Thomas E. Reimchen

Nonindigenous Pests and Biological Invasions Collection

Background: As a cross-boundary resource subsidy, spawning salmon can strongly affect consumer and ecosystem ecology. Here we examine whether this marine resource can influence a terrestrial wolf-deer (Canis lupus-Odocoileus hemionus) predator-prey system in coastal British Columbia, Canada. Data on resource availability and resource use among eight wolf groups for three seasons over four years allow us to evaluate competing hypotheses that describe salmon as either an alternate resource, consumed in areas where deer are scarce, or as a targeted resource, consumed as a positive function of its availability. Faecal (n = 2203 wolf scats) and isotopic analyses (n = 60 …

Behavioural Interactions Between The Introduced Plague Minnow Gambusia Holbrooki And The Vulnerable Native Australian Ornate Rainbowfish Rhadinocentrus Ornatus, Under Experimental Conditions, K. Keller, C. Brown

Sentience Collection

The impact of the plague minnow Gambusia holbrooki on the ornate rainbowfish Rhadinocentrus ornatus was investigated by comparing the behavioural response and microhabitat preferences of populations of R. ornatus collected from locations that are sympatric and allopatric with G. holbrooki. Rhadinocentrus ornatus populations from sympatric areas exhibited a significantly higher frequency of intraspecific chases, spent significantly more time at an intermediate depth and were nipped significantly less often by G. holbrooki compared to the allopatric R. ornatus populations. The frequency of intraspecific chases by all R. ornatus populations were greatest immediately following G. holbrooki exposure and increased further with repeated …

Abundance And Distribution Of Large Mammals In The Upper Ogun Game Reserve, Oyo State, Nigeria, T. A. Afolayan, K. R. N. Milligan, S. O. Salami

International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems

Three different methods for estimating wild animal populations were used to assess the density of different species in a game reserve in the Sahel region of Nigeria. Hunting for bushmeat by local communities living around the reserve was identified as one of the threats to wildlife populations. Bushmeat was an essential resource for communities around the reserve.

The North American Black Duck (Anas Rubriges): A Case Study Of 28 Years Of Failure In American Wildlife Management, John W. Grandy

International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems

A scientific and technical analysis is presented of the factors that may have been responsible for an estimated 60% decline in the black duck (Anas rubripes) population since 1955. The analyses presented show that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS], the management agency responsible for waterfowl management in the United States, has recognized the population decline, that the FWS's own experts have consistently recognized that hunting is the most likely cause of the population decline and that hunting is the only mortality factor which wildlife managers can control in the practical sense. Using FWS information, the author …

Biological Control Of Aleutian Island Arctic Fox: A Preliminary Strategy, Edward W. West, Robert L. Rudd

International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems

The intentional introduction of exotic animals can generally be expected to yield unanticipated biological consequences. Single-purpose introductions frequently result in ecological catastrophe. Islands are particularly vulnerable to such assault. Arctic foxes [Alopex lagopus), released for fur farming on the Aleutian Islands, formerly devoid of land predators, have significantly altered nesting avifaunal diversity, abundance, and productivity. A program for restoring the historical distribution and abundance of critically affected bird species is described. In a long-term study, biological control methods are proposed to test the hypothesis that introduced sterile red foxes [Vulpes fulva), apparently, a competitively superior species, will markedly …

Letter To Editor: Turtle Excluder Device, James Sternberg

International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems

The author comments on a previous article describing devices (excluder devices) that protect sea turtles during shrimping operations and corrects a few errors.

Experiences In The Protection Of The Large Predators In Finland, Erkki Pulliainen

International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems

During the nineteenth century, the large predators of Finland- wolf, bear, lynx, and wolverine- were exterminated in the southern and western regions of the country. There were almost no lynx by late 1950. However, a protection order issued in 1968 resulted in a steady increase in their number, to about 300 by 1980. A breeding wolverine population existed until the late 1960s. In the 1970s, most were killed by snowmobiles. It is now thought only 10-30 inhabit the frontiers between Finland and the USSR and Finland and Norway. Bears, in the 1970s, tended to immigrate to Finland from the east; …

Striving For Common Ground: Humane And Scientific Considerations In Contemporary Wildlife Management, Stephen R. Kellert

International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems

Although there is a diversity of opinion about how to view the relationship between humans and wildlife, recent political pressures from the current administration make it mandatory that these diverse groups coalesce to use their combined leverage to halt the planned incursions into the remaining habitats of wildlife. It is also essential to begin to see nature as a complex and interrelated whole and to respect the integrity of that whole rather than select individual species for affection and protection.

Bureaucracy And Wildlife: A Historical Overview, Edward E. Langenau

International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems

This paper provides a framework for understanding the Government's position on many wildlife topics, including humane ethics. The Government's historical role in wildlife conservation is traced to pertinent theories of bureaucracy. It is shown that Government involvement in wildlife conservation increased through successive stages of change because of interest group activity.

Ethical Issues And Future Directions In Wildlife Management, John W. Grandy

International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems

Recent progress in the protection of wildlife and wildlife refuges is currently being undermined by the efforts of James Watt, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, who believes that commercial interests should take precedence over the preservation of pristine wilderness areas and wildlife sanctuaries. As populations approach extinction because of programs like decimation of habitats and predator control, the consequent loss is more than simply aesthetic: genetic material unique to each species will be lost forever. Particular issues of immediate concern are the fate of bobcats and whales, inhumane trapping, and the Endangered Species Act. As a longer-term concern, wildlife management's …

Introduced Species And The Issue Of Animal Welfare, Michael Hutchins, Victoria Stevens, Natasha Atkins

Ecology Collection

Recently, considerable debate has been heard about the control or elimination of introduced or "exotic" animals on publicly held U.S. lands. Species introductions, whether intentional or unintentional, seem to be an inevitable result of human activities, but they may result in both economic and ecological problems: It has been estimated that over 90 percent of all such introductions have been harmful in some respect. Control of exotics can be accomplished through containment, shooting, poisoning, reintroduction of native predators, introduction of disease organisms, live capture and removal, and reproductive inhibition.

Those who must make decisions about the fate of introduced species …

The Leopard In Africa: Biological And Cultural Realities, Norman Myers

International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems

The author comments on a proposal to change the leopard's status in Africa from endangered to threatened, which would open the leopard up to sport hunting. This proposed change would be a mistake, in the author's opinion. While the leopard still occurs in satisfactory numbers in some countries despite being rarely seen, its population is much lower than it could in other countries. The author notes that the real problem is not the species' biological status but the institutional, socio-cultural, and economic considerations. Wildlife conservation in Africa is challenging enough without the further complications that sport hunting brings.

The Coyote (Canis Latrans) In Panama, Eustorgio Mendez, Francisco Delgado, Demetrio Miranda

International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems

This report reveals that the coyote, Canis Iatrans, has recently extended its southern range to Panama. The skin of one adult female coyote killed by hunters at Los Pirales, a farm near Gualaca in Chiriqui Province, western Panama, has been deposited in the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory Vertebrate Collection. In the same province, other coyotes have been observed in Alanje, Boquete, and Boqueron. The probable coyote range in Panama is indicated, and the need for an urgent management strategy for this canid in the Republic is also expressed.

Edging Toward Extinction: The Status Of Wildlife In Latin America, Douglas R. Shane

eBooks

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