About Books: Unravelling the Ethics of Killing for Conservation

Mark Lynch

October 1, 2024 12 MIN READ Book and Video Reviews

Hugh Warwick is an ecologist and environmental writer from Britain. He has a deep affection for hedgehogs, and it was through that species that he began to do a yearslong investigation into the philosophy and success of culling to improve the fortunes of particular species. On the islands of North and South Uist, off the coast of Scotland, hedgehogs had been introduced by humans. As their populations grew, the hedgehogs posed a real threat to ground-nesting shorebirds and terns on those islands by feasting on their eggs. Because most species of shorebirds and terns are in decline in Britain, it became obvious that something had to be done. Proposed solutions included trapping and killing the hedgehogs or trapping them and then, eventually, releasing them on the mainland while monitoring the situation on the islands for years. There were questions about staffing, cost, and if they were to be culled, how humane was the method. Radical animal rights folks got involved, and conservationists were under the gun to do something, but no one could decide what the best solution would be. Warwick got involved and from that point on became very interested in the seeming oxymoron of “killing for conservation.”

Warwick is an admitted animal lover and cannot abide cruelty to animals. He used to be strictly vegetarian for decades, but lately has become more “vague-an” (p.10). We know this because in the opening pages of Cull of the Wild he expresses his need to be honest with readers about his beliefs, his prejudices. He knows that this investigation into conservation culling will help him better understand his relationship with nature.

The honesty is going to be, I imagine, at times uncomfortable or even painful. As we examine our relationship with nature, I fear I will have my prejudices challenged, and that is never pleasant. (p. 11)

Warwick begins with a short personal history of philosophy and ethics particularly as it pertains to the rights of animals. This includes how we feel about killing for a purpose. This begins with the famous “trolley problem” exercise in ethics:

Five people are tied to a tram track—there is a runaway tram on the way that will kill them. You are standing by a lever that you can pull and direct the tram onto a spur, saving the five, but there is a single person tied to that track, who will die. Do you step away, do nothing and let five people die? Or do you act, and in so doing so, ensure the death of one person.

The fat man features in a different iteration of this problem. Now, there are still five people tied down, unable to escape, and you are observing the runaway tram from a bridge, while standing next to a large man. And you know that if you push him, his bulk will be sufficient to block the tram, saving the five, but killing him. What do you do? (p. 18)

There is no one morally correct answer to these conundrums, but thinking about which choice we would make enables us to think about how we feel about killing. There are of course absolutists who believe you can never kill and will refuse to participate in the trolley problem. But as Warwick asserts many times in Cull of the Wild, when examining real-life conservation situations, you cannot just opt out: “It feels like there is no way that we can act and not cause harm—and yet inaction also causes harm.” (p. 258)

If all this philosophy and ethics sounds too heady, Warwick keeps it interesting and entertaining throughout. In print and in person, Hugh Warwick is the kind of person you would love to argue with over a couple of beers at a local pub. This is because he takes his writing cues from another famous writer and philosopher: “As George Bernard Shaw said, “If you are going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” (p. 21)

The situation with the hedgehogs and seabirds on the Uists quickly devolved into opposing camps, with all sides refusing to talk to the other side and characterizing their opponents in simplistic terms. There are animal rights supporters who are certainly not extremists, yet they were all lumped together as crazies.

Words are powerful. At the start of the cull, when those trying to stop it were described as animal rights extremists, it was not anticipated how that would impact future conversations. The reality is that when you have one side as painted beyond the pale, as many in the establishment see animal rights activists, it is very hard for the establishment to then sit at the table with them and talk. (p. 45)

Hedgehogs are also a problem in New Zealand, and it was proposed that those hedgehogs could be trapped and released into Great Britain, where that species is in serious decline on the mainland. But as Warwick finds in case after case, solutions to problems of declining species rarely have simple solutions.

Stepping in to “save” wildlife for the best reasons can end up causing as much death, and even more suffering than had they been left to the tender mercies of the cullers. For example, while hedgehog numbers in the United Kingdom are declining, bringing in more from New Zealand will do nothing to halt the decline, and in fact we risk “feeding the sinkhole.” The problems causing the decline persist, so until we deal with the loss of habitat, habitat fragmentation, and the destruction of the species hedgehogs feed on, there is no point. It is an action undertaken to make us feel better, not undertaken with an understanding of the basic ecological issues at play. (p. 46–7)

Another factor to consider in culling programs is cost. No political body or conservation organization has unlimited funds. “To rub salt in the wound, the amount spent by the UWP (Uist Wader Project) from April 2003 to January 2011 was ₤ 1.3 million. During which time they removed 1,510 hedgehogs. Which works out at ₤860 per hedgehog.” (p. 47)

Many conservation organizations have been rather close-lipped about their culling programs for fear of losing donors. In Britain, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has made a decision to be more transparent about their culling programs. “Between 2012 and 2017, for example, they killed more than 8,000 animals in the name of conservation: 1,715 crows, 1,760 foxes, 1,734 roe deer, along with many others, and an unrecorded number of rabbits.” (p. 57)

The RSPB has an ethics advisory board and thought-out guidelines to consider before any culling program is begun. Of course, by being transparent about their culling of certain species, the RSPB has been loudly criticized by animal rights groups and by gamekeepers who accuse them of hypocrisy. At times in Cull of the Wild it seems that everyone is yelling and no one is listening. Warwick blames on-line politics for some of this discord.

Cull of the Wild moves on from the Uists to other spots in Britain, including the island of Lundy, where puffins and Manx Shearwaters used to breed. Black rats were determined to be the main predator of eggs and chicks. It is interesting that black rats are in fact a declining and uncommon mammal in Britain, unlike the much more common brown rat. “More importantly for me, though, is the need to recognize that an active choice was made to kill these animals; that on Lundy, the rats were deemed less worthy than the birds.

For Warwick it is critical to understand that we are making ethical and moral choices when we choose to kill. We are stating that one species is better than another.

The reason an extermination campaign was launched in 2002 was simple. There were just 13 puffins in 2000, down from 3,500 in 1939, and there had been no successful breeding since 1986. The British Isles is home to over 90 percent of the world’s Manx shearwaters. Their numbers on Lundy were down to 166 pairs in the same survey, and they had not produced any chicks since 1959. There were two main reasons behind this: the loss of sand eels–a main food for much of the bird life on the island–and rats, who would eat eggs and chicks. (p. 109)

Though Lundy is now considered rat-free, constant monitoring is still needed to make sure black rats don’t return, but there are very few people willing to do this monitoring. This situation poses another question before a culling is considered: what is the end point? Are we looking at a labor-intensive effort that will exist into the future? Who will pay for this effort? The work never stops.

The number of culling programs that Warwick investigates is extensive. Just in Britain there are programs trying to control pine martens and badgers, both beloved declining species, in areas where the massive grouse, the Capercaillie, breed. There are reserves where Red Kites are predating lapwing chicks. In every case the ultimate cause of the conflict of species is human based, usually by someone importing a non-native species or human destruction of habitat. There are now raccoons all over Berlin and hippos in Colombia. The Ruddy Duck is a North American species that is not imported into Europe, but their accidental numbers are increasing in western Europe. They are now considering killing Ruddys in Britain so they do not make it to the Mediterranean and threaten the native White-headed Ducks there. Minks are under the gun in several places. When Warwick turns to New Zealand and Australia, the situations just get even more complicated.

North American gray squirrels are now a real problem in southern Britain. They are an introduced species, released several times over decades. The grays are destroying trees by stripping bark. They are driving out the resident red squirrels. The European reds are a charismatic species with little tufts on their ears, and they are now common in Britain only in several parts of Scotland. One man, Craig Shuttleworth, who lives in Anglesey, has taken it upon himself to trap and kill all the grays in the area and re-establish the reds. He has killed ~7000 grays and the reds are slowly returning to the area, but this effort requires that traps be checked daily. To complicate matters, he was interviewed by the BBC and his name got out to the public, and now he gets threats from radical animal lovers.

One of the places that Warwick covers in Cull of the Wild is Lord Howe Island, between Australia and New Zealand. On this tiny island, there were a number of unique endemics, several of which were wiped out by introduced rats. There was a large flightless rail, the Lord Howe Woodhen, which was thought to be exterminated by rats. It was later discovered that they survived atop the large and steep mountains on the island. Lord Howe also had amazing breeding populations of several species of shearwaters that were also declining rapidly because of rats. And it was not just rats. There were introduced Masked Owls and a number of invasive plant species. Eventually, an intensive rat trapping program was started, and over time this program was a definite success. When I visited the island in the 1990s I was able to fall asleep to the moaning of shearwaters in their burrows, watch a Black-winged Petrel do its display flight, and bump into several very tame woodhens. I also saw a number of rat traps. In this case, culling worked.

Throughout Cull of the Wild, Warwick talks with, and when possible, spends time with people involved in the culling programs as well as people who have written about declining species, culling, and the environment. These meetings included having lunch with a gamekeeper, an occupation Warwick loathes because of their propensity to kill any species that may threaten their kept stocks of species like pheasants and grouse.

Mark Bekoff has written several books on species rights and compassionate conservation and has four tenets he abides by. These are (1) do no harm, (2) individuals matter, (3) inclusivity, and (4) peaceful co-existence. Warwick finds him a bit unyielding in his beliefs, yet also finds some of his ideas interesting to consider:

From the outset, he was completely uncompromising. “I want killing off the table,” he said. “When killing is a possibility in a conservation setting, it is almost invariably the choice that is taken. We think we have the right to intervene but human exceptionalism is not something I want to be part of. And if you take the time to look at our intervention, we have not been doing a great job of it.” (p. 254)

At the end of another spectrum is Professor Wayne Linklater who does not consider species as important as the ecosystem as a whole.

“At the heart of my thinking,” he said, “is that the ends do NOT justify the means. A lot of conservationists are, I am afraid, like developers and oil miners–they believe they have the power to overcome nature. We need to look at the big picture, we need to learn how to live with nature, not dominate it. And, as I have already said, that will take humility on our part. We are already past the point of no return. So now we need to engage with the ecological and social realities, rather than stay in a fantasy world.” (p. 232)

Warner continued to quote Linklater, and this is where Linklater lost me because Kakapo is one of my most wanted to see species.

You think of the loss of a species is calamitous–but that is only because of your personal values. The ecosystem is still going to continue sequestering carbon, cleaning water and generating oxygen. Decay pathways will still work, as will nutrient cycling. We have decided that the species is the pinnacle of nature, yet obviously it’s not. They come and they go, and we give them value and try to protect them. But nature continues. Look–Antarctica is warming up, it won’t be long before plants start to grow there. Are we supposed to eradicate them because they are new? No, we are going to just accept that nature is changing and adapt. Of course, we are accelerating that change. But if global society was serious about the problems, we would pull back from this pathway to destruction. (p. 235)

We need to be prepared to lose some species, and accept that others will only survive in zoos or highly managed settings. You know, this does not make me popular at home, but I do not associate the loss of kakapos, for example, with a large calamity. What I consider a large calamity is the loss of ecosystem function. We cannot go back–there is no point where everything was okay that we can reach. We have to look forwards. And we have to consider what we need to survive. (p. 236)

Linklater’s thoughts are very much like those of Hiller, Odenbaugh, and Rohwer in their New York Times op-ed piece. They all treat species as if they are separate from the ecosystem, almost like an appendix. Something that can be removed without much consequence to the body as a whole. Furthermore, they look at ecosystems as primarily resources for human use. The planet is going to hell, and we are going to need all the carbon sequestering and oxygen production that forests can provide, and if species go extinct, so be it.

This is the importance of Cull of the Wild. By reporting opinions about environmental culling from a wide range of people, the author asks the reader to really confront their own basic beliefs about species and what we should be trying to accomplish by killing animals in the name of conservation.

The reader is presented with a chorus of ideas and opinions about the practice of killing for conservation, and we are encouraged to join in the debate. Several of my general take-aways from Cull of the Wild include that, first and foremost, we should work hard to prevent these situations from happening in the first place. This effort would include enacting stricter laws about wildlife importation. Look at the cacophony regarding southern Florida fauna that is widely impacting native wildlife. The pythons are just one example. Most of this havoc could have been prevented with strict laws about importing and keeping exotic species.

Culling programs are all labor intensive and cost needs to be considered. Always look for alternatives to simply killing one species to conserve another. In Cull of the Wild, Warwick gives examples of programs that trapped and removed the problem species, as well as programs that used more limited and targeted killing combined with non-lethal methods such as strategic fencing. It is interesting that none of the people who Warwick talked with about culling programs enjoyed having to kill species, but they usually looked to the greater good of the species helped by the killing.

Culling programs are most successful on islands, the smaller the better. Programs that take place in large areas of the mainland are not as likely to succeed as the possibility that numbers of the problem species are going to survive is high. It is also easier to check to see if an area is “rat free” if the area is a small island. Programs to trap cowbirds in Kirtland Warbler nesting areas must be on-going efforts.

Is the culling of a species really addressing the most important causes of a decline? Warwick writes that in 2023, upwards of 236,350 kangaroos were killed in parts of Australia, ostensibly to prevent further desertification of grasslands. It is revealed in Cull of the Wild that the real problem with the grasslands was caused by overgrazing by sheep and cattle. No one wants to upset the sheep farmers. In other cases, climate change may be the real culprit behind a species decline, but killing is a much easier choice to bring about an immediate if temporary change.

Always ask when will the killing be over and how will we know that it was effective? Something that doesn’t concern all folks, but does me, is to ensure that the killing be as painless and humane as possible. This issue is particularly important in programs where poisoning is used. Do not always believe what you are told about the suffering caused by any particular poison and do your own research. Finally, one of Warwick’s greatest desires is to not think in simplistic terms when dealing with the environment and culling programs. There are never simple solutions to complex conservation challenges. Shun the black and white and embrace the gray.

We also need to learn how to mix the objective and subjective with some consistency. Above all, though, is my desire that we treat the world with more care, and recognize that the study of ecology should be approached with considerably more seriousness than it is at present. (p. 49)

Cull of the Wild is an important book that is a pleasure to read for any person interested in ecology and diversity of species. If you have read about the proposed Barred Owl cull and wondered if culling is the best solution, then read this book. At times it can seem hopeless, there appear to be so many problems in so many places with so many species at risk and so many species being culled. It is easy to just throw your arms up and surrender to despair. But as Warwick writes several times in Cull of the Wild, doing nothing is not an option. Warwick finally encourages the reader to stay hopeful despite it all.

To listen to Mark Lynch’s conversation with Hugh Warwick, go to https://wicn.org/podcast/hugh-warwick/.