Can animal rights activists and conservationists find common ground?

Axis deer (Axis axis), common in native India, along with fallow deer (Dama dama), native to Europe, had increased to 1100 individuals at Point Reyes prior to recent control efforts.When, in the early 2000s, the staff of the Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California started considering lethal control to remove the proliferating non-native deer from the park, it knew it was tackling a sensitive issue. Wildlife biologists were concerned about the ecological impacts from exotic fallow and axis deer which had orginally been purchased from the San Francisco Zoo in the 1940's and introduced to the area.

Scientists believe that the deer damage soils and vegetation, compete for food with native tule elk and black-tailed deer displacing them, and have the potential to contaminate them with fatal disease. Yet local residents and visitors had grown fond of those endearing park fixtures.

The Park Service dutifully followed the National Environment Policy Act process, involving the public in consultations right from the beginning and incorporating all the raised issues in its alternatives. The final Environmental Impact Statement adopted in October 2006 took five years in the making.

Nonetheless, groups mounted strong opposition. The Non-Native Deer Management Plan did opt for using an experimental contraceptive treatment, an avenue favored by the animal rights coalition, but it combined this method with the lethal removal of an estimated 1000 non-native deer, the goal being to entirely eliminate fallow and axis deer by 2021.

“We certainly had our input,” said Carrie Harrington, from the Marin Humane Society. “But I don’t think the two sides ever came to a conclusion that satisfied both parties.” The Marin Humane Society, along with In Defense of Animals and other animal rights organizations, refused to accept a plan that resorted in grand part to killing. “We’re never going to stand behind lethal means to control a wildlife population”, Carrie Harrington said.

The Point Reyes non-native deer controversy is just one recent example in the ongoing conflict between animal rights groups and conservationists regarding the use of lethal control in ecosystem restoration. In this case, the plan was carried out despite organized protests, media coverage, and a request by local politicians to review a Humane Society of the U.S. report. Today, between 70 and 80 non-native deer remain in Point Reyes National Seashore: they are sterilized and will slowly die of old age.

However, in some similar instances, lawsuits have stalled land managers’ efforts to get rid of an invasive species. In north-western Italy, animal rights organizations sued the National Wildlife Institute for attempting to eradicate grey squirrels. In Vermont, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was unable to suppress mute swans after being challenged in court even though the introduced birds have been shown to negatively impact habitat for native waterfowl.

In their 2008 essay in the journal Conservation Biology, Gad Perry and Dan Perry explore whether interactions among animal rights groups and conservation biologists can be improved. The authors contend that since the two parties share many values, they should be able to cooperate in some circumstances, such as advocating for a more stricter control on pet trade.

The authors offer suggestions on how the two sides could work towards common goals. Managers could give greater consideration to non-lethal measures. Animal rights groups could help secure funding for non-lethal control methods (since they tend to be more expensive) and could provide stronger support for alternative conservation approaches such as habitat preservation and reintroduction of extirpated natural predators.

Meanwhile, Michael Hutchinson, Executive Director of the Wildlife Society takes a different perspective. In a response to their paper, also published in Conservation Biology, he is quite adamant that animal rights and conservation ethics are incompatible. He argues that the animal rights movement represents a simplistic view which "does not recognize the interrelationships that exist among various species in functioning ecosystems." He contends that animal rights conflicts ultimately hinder conservation efforts and that conservationists in confronting this issue need to show courage - not cooperation and compromise.

“The National Park Service protects ecosystems, not individual animals. But animal rights groups believe that every individual animal needs to be protected. Our two missions are different,” said Natalie Gates, a wildlife biologist at Point Reyes National Seashore, recalling the events surrounding the non-native deer management plan implementation.

Although she downplays the public uproar at the time, hostility did reach an unacceptable level when the chairman for the Marin chapter of the Sierra Club received death threats for expressing his approval of the park’s policy. These types of conflicts are likely to continue flaring up unless conservationists and animal rights advocates can start finding some common ground.

by Cecile Lepage