6 - Animal Welfare, Animal Rights, and Conservation Translocations: Moving Forward in the Face of Ethical Dilemmas

Summary

Greater consideration of the welfare of individual animals can contribute to population-level conservation success (i.e. healthy individuals result in a healthy population). Conservation, welfare, and ethical issues do not exist in isolation; conservation translocation practitioners identify them as interlinked. There are situations in conservation translocations where individual-level animal welfare concerns and population-level conservation concerns conflict, requiring trade-offs and generating difficult moral dilemmas. Conservation translocation practitioners would like more guidance on incorporating welfare considerations into their programmes, highlighting a need for standardised, taxon-specific guidelines, as well as increased communication among practitioners. Structured decision-making could be a useful approach for balancing or aligning welfare and conservation considerations and would provide transparency as to how these concerns are addressed. Overall, there is demand for increased consideration of individual animal welfare in conservation practice. Open, honest, and critical assessment of the issues is required, together with respectful dialogue, collaboration, and knowledge sharing among stakeholders.