Book Review Open Access

Wildlife health management requires people to make decisions, be that a hunter, a politician, a funder, or others. Human behaviors and choices are sometimes the most viable targets of wildlife health interventions or are at the root of many problems; therefore, helping people make decisions that achieve wildlife health objectives requires us to understand the people who we are asking to change what they do. Whether or not it is explicitly acknowledged, ethics determines the ultimate management changes that are made.

Ethics refers to standards and practices that govern a person’s behaviors or acts, such as deciding to do something; therefore, a firm understanding of the ethical dimensions of wildlife management is a critical tool for wildlife health managers. However, in my experience, the explicit and systematic application of ethical theory and principles is rarely taught or discussed in most wildlife health circles. This is not to question the ethics of wildlife health professionals nor to say ethical dimensions are not considered in research and policy, but rather to suggest that much less time has been dedicated to equipping future wildlife health managers with the tools and the language to understand what moral principles may affect the acceptability or feasibility of health management decisions than on understanding the pathophysiology or epidemiology of problems that require a decision to be made. This book helps to address this imbalance.

The stated goal of the book is to help readers think their way through the often controversial and complicated world of wildlife management. The book is divided into two parts: part one lays an introductory foundation of key ethical theories and principles in a wildlife management and conservation context, and part two illustrates how those theories and principles can be applied to specific case studies. The authors bring in interesting and relevant case material throughout the book, helping readers to see the relevance of the topics and issues discussed. At times, this does cause some redundancy between chapters. The case study sections in part two could have been enhanced by digging deeper rather than primarily illustrating applications of principles and theories from part one. The authors have recognized the challenges of balancing the needs for some readers to develop an introductory familiarity with key ethical concepts and other readers who would benefit from an extended dive that explores the nuances of these issues, all within the page limits of a single book. As the authors state, this book only scrapes the surface of this complex area of inquiry.

The authors also noted that the practical limitations of publishing required them to constrain their considerations largely to terrestrial species and mostly to mammals. They recognized that their ethical frameworks were from a global northern, western philosophical perspective. The fact that only one author claimed field experience in wildlife management caused some trepidation that some complex issues were oversimplified and that some nuances were missed. Even with these concerns, the authors did an admirable job of reflecting the ethical complexity of wildlife health management decisions. I believe that this book gives an excellent conceptual foundation that can equip wildlife health managers with the rhetoric, concepts, and language to explore the implications of management decisions through multiple lenses and thus hopefully help to develop and communicate advice to foster decisions that promote and protect wildlife health more effectively.

The first five chapters orient readers to values and ethical world views. Here, the authors begin to explore the different ways in which wildlife is valued and how the way we frame the world can affect our assessment of the ethical norms at play. Key concepts such as animal welfare and biodiversity values are explored, often with good use of current examples. The sixth chapter introduces readers to some core ethical theories, including rights theory, virtue ethics, and relational theories. The next three chapters (7–9) explore the ways that we look at management and conservation issues and the moral issues and disagreements that arise. Topics such as the North American model of conservation, ecosystems services, wildlife control, indigenous management, sustainable use, and compassionate conservation are briefly explored. This helps set up an overview of ethical decision-making. The remaining chapters (10–18) apply the foundational concepts to case studies. Cases considered include management of hyperabundant species, conservation via commodification, management of invasive animals, indigenous use of wildlife, captive breeding, climate change, and zoonotic disease risk management. Each case study picks a specific situation to illustrate the issues within the broader topic. For example, the chapter on hyperabundant species uses white-tailed deer management as an example, whereas the chapter on wildlife research examines the ethical dimensions of amphibian toe-clipping. I appreciated that the authors at no time tried to prescribe the “correct” ethical assessment of these cases, but instead used the cases to show how the ethical foundations in the earlier chapter apply, interact, and influence possible management decisions.

The book does not have a focus on wildlife disease management apart from one chapter on zoonoses. However, within each chapter, I was able to see the similarities between issues dealt with in the case studies and animal health issues in which I have been previously involved. For example, the issue of the differences in concerns for individual animals, populations, species, and social systems will resonate with those having to make disease control decisions. The growing expectations to attend to wildlife welfare have clear implications for health management, and the discussions of such issues in wildlife research have clear parallels with the experiences of many wildlife health researchers.

Ethics is about doing the right thing, making the right choices, and protecting the common good. Nevertheless, as this book reveals, deciding what good means is not always straightforward, due to the multiple coexisting ethical perspectives that swirl around wildlife management issues. This book can equip people with an understanding of the ethical dilemmas that different worldviews create. It can provide insights into how to come to ethical management decisions without only having to rely on the teaching of others or to just do what we have seen our mentors do. This book provides readers with the concepts and language to communicate and anticipate this complexity and to better navigate divergent views, thus helping future managers to communicate their goals and intentions in a more widely acceptable way. By working through the case studies, readers gain insights into how to work with others more effectively.

This book would benefit anyone who plans a career in which they hope to affect real-world change in wildlife management and conservation, including wildlife health. Not only would it introduce early career professionals or students to core concepts that can propel them forward but also it would suit readers who are trying to refine their approach to conducting ethical and acceptable wildlife management.

For full transparency, I am acknowledged in the forward of this book for giving comments on an earlier draft of a chapter, but I had never seen all the chapters before being asked to provide this review.