New Zealand is under increasing pressure from terrestrial and aquatic pests, weeds and diseases that threaten the country's ecosystems and economy. Ongoing improvement in existing pest management methodologies and novel approaches are required in response to public concerns about animal welfare, increasingly stringent trade requirements, abolition of groups of pesticides and resistance to existing pesticides as well as, possibly, biological control agents. Surveillance and pest monitoring are needed to increase the chances of early interception of invasive species or to confirm their eradication. Core capabilities in taxonomy, genomics, phenology, ecology, pest impacts, development of novel control tools and social science are required and must be maintained nationally. Given New Zealand's unique environment, the ecology of invasive pests cannot be presumed to be the same as that in their native ranges, yet currently many pests in New Zealand are managed with poor understanding of their bionomics and impa...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03036758.2014.1000343

New Zealand pest management: current and future challenges

People affect animals through four broad types of activity: (1) people keep companion, farm, laboratory and captive wild animals, often while using them for some purpose; (2) people cause deliberate harm to animals through activities such as slaughter, pest control, hunting, and toxicology testing; (3) people cause direct but unintended harm to animals through crop production, transportation, night-time lighting, and many other human activities; and (4) people harm animals indirectly by disturbing ecological systems and the processes of nature, for example by destroying habitat, introducing foreign species, and causing pollution and climate change. Each type of activity affects vast numbers of animals and raises different scientific and ethical challenges. In Type 1 activities (keeping animals), the challenge is to improve care, sometimes by finding options that benefit both people and animals. In Type 2 activities (deliberate harm), the challenge is to avoid compounding intentional harms with additional, unintended harms, such as animal suffering. For Type 3 and 4 activities, the challenges are to understand the unintended and indirect harms that people cause, to motivate people to recognise and avoid such harms, and to find less harmful ways of achieving human goals. With Type 4 activities, this may involve recognising commonalities between animal welfare, conservation and human well-being. Animal welfare science and animal ethics philosophy have traditionally focused on Type 1 and 2 activities. These fields need to include Type 3 and 4 activities, especially as they increase with human population growth.

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Four types of activities that affect animals: implications for animal welfare science and animal ethics philosophy.

Why is eradication of invasive mustelids so difficult

Wildlife management, pest control and conservation projects often involve killing nonhuman animals. In the United Kingdom, introduced grey squirrels Sciurus carolinensis are killed in large numbers...

/pdf/killing-squirrels-exploring-motivations-and-practices-of-3lvhsio1dx.pdf

Killing squirrels: Exploring motivations and practices of lethal wildlife management

Simple survey methods for small mammals, such as indices of trap captures per unit effort, are often the only practicable means of monitoring populations over the long term and at landscape scale and the only source of valuable historical data. They include two fundamental assumptions about the target populations (uniform distribution and equal detectability). Concern has often been expressed that, if these assumptions are violated, conventional density indices could give misleading results. Site occupancy analysis (SOA) can detect significantly uneven distribution of local populations (from variation in probability of occupancy) and reliability of indices of abundance (from variation in detectability) without requiring enumeration. We use this method to examine standardised capture records from long-term population surveys of non-commensal house mice (Mus musculus), ship rats (Rattus rattus), Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) and stoats (Mustela erminea), sampled in four representative temperate forest habitats in New Zealand. Best fit models generated by SOA were consistent with (1) constant or random probability of occupancy for stoats and dynamic equilibrium probability of occupancy for most populations of mice and rats; (2) widespread site-specific variation in probability of detection, especially substantial in rats and correlated with habitat covariates; (3) direct correlations between detectability and density index in mice and rats sampled at 50 m intervals over 3 days, probably because the effects on the density index of variation in numbers available to be caught (population size) were much larger than the effects of changes in catchability (individual behaviour); (4) declines after 6 days in detectability of stoats and rats sampled at 3–400 m intervals over 10 days, attributed to a local trap-out effect. Longer-term variations in the density index were consistent with observed changes in reproductive parameters and age structure that are known to follow variations in real numbers. We conclude that violations of the assumptions of uniform distribution and equal detectability, while real, were not sufficient to prevent these data from providing information adequate for (1) short-term population assessments (2) long-term, low-level monitoring and (3) preliminary modelling.

Variable detectability in long-term population surveys of small mammals

Fenn traps are widely used in New Zealand for control of small predators. Introduced stoats ( Mustela erminea ) pose a significant risk to many indigenous New Zealand bird species, and the Department of Conservation (DOC) has used Fenn traps to reduce their numbers over the last 20-30 years. Changes to New Zealand animal welfare legislation in 1999 focused attention on whether this trap killed quickly and consistently and, therefore, pen tests were carried out to assess their killing performance. A guideline for testing traps was developed for the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, and to meet the guidelines kill traps must render all ten test animals irreversibly unconscious within three minutes. Testing is stopped as soon as three animals fail the criterion. New Mk IV and MkVI and used MkVI Fenn traps were tested. With the exception of one stoat captured in a new MkVI trap, all stoats remained conscious until euthanased at 5 minutes, and consequently only three stoats were used in each test. In response to these results, a new series of traps was developed (DOC 150, 200, and 250). These killed all 10 test animals, with all rendered irreversibly unconscious within 3 minutes and most unconscious in less than 20 seconds. The new DOC traps have also been tested for their efficacy at killing other small mammals including rats, ferrets, and hedgehogs, which are often captured as non-target species. As these new traps replace Fenn traps in Department of Conservation stoat control operations, significant improvements in the welfare of trapped stoats should result.

P. Waddington

Papers

Traps for killing stoats ( Mustela erminea ): improving welfare performance