Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Ethics Of Eliminating Harmful Species: The Case Of The Tsetse Fly, Jérémy Bouyer, Neil H. Carter, Chelsea Batavia, Michael Paul Nelson

Human-Environment Systems Research Center Faculty Publications and Presentations

Wildlife species harmful to humans are often targets of control and elimination programs. A contemporary example is the tsetse fly, a vector of sleeping sickness and African animal trypanosomosis. Tsetse flies have recently been targeted by a pan-African eradication campaign. If it is successful, the campaign could push the entire tsetse family to extinction. With the emergence of effective and efficient elimination technologies, ethical assessment of proposed elimination campaigns is urgently needed. We examine the ethics of tsetse fly elimination by considering arguments predicated on both the instrumental and the intrinsic values of the species at local and global scales. …