Journal article
Anthropogenic threats to wild cetacean welfare and a tool to inform policy in this area
Frontiers in Veterinary Science, Vol.7, Art. 57
2020
Abstract
Human activities and anthropogenic environmental changes are having a profound effect on biodiversity and the sustainability and health of many populations and species of wild mammals. There has been less attention devoted to the impact of human activities on the welfare of individual wild mammals, although ethical reasoning suggests that the welfare of an individual is important regardless of species abundance or population health. There is growing interest in developing methodologies and frameworks that could be used to obtain an overview of anthropogenic threats to animal welfare. This paper shows the steps taken to develop a functional welfare assessment tool for wild cetaceans (WATWC) via an iterative process involving input from a wide range of experts and stakeholders. Animal welfare is a multidimensional concept, and the WATWC presented made use of the Five Domains model of animal welfare to ensure that all areas of potential welfare impact were considered. A pilot version of the tool was tested and then refined to improve functionality. We demonstrated that the refined version of the WATWC was useful to assess real-world impacts of human activity on Southern Resident killer whales. There was close within-scenario agreement between assessors as well as between-scenario differentiation of overall welfare impact. The current article discusses the challenges raised by assessing welfare in scenarios where objective data on cetacean behavioral and physiological responses are sparse and proposes that the WATWC approach has value in identifying important information gaps and in contributing to policy decisions relating to human impacts on whales, dolphins, and porpoises.
Details
- Title
- Anthropogenic threats to wild cetacean welfare and a tool to inform policy in this area
- Authors/Creators
- C. Nicol (Author/Creator) - Royal Veterinary CollegeL. Bejder (Author/Creator) - Murdoch UniversityL. Green (Author/Creator) - University of BirminghamC. Johnson (Author/Creator) - Massey UniversityL. Keeling (Author/Creator) - Swedish University of Agricultural SciencesD. Noren (Author/Creator) - National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationJ. Van der Hoop (Author/Creator) - Aarhus UniversityM. Simmonds (Author/Creator) - University of Bristol
- Publication Details
- Frontiers in Veterinary Science, Vol.7, Art. 57
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media S.A.
- Identifiers
- 991005545312907891
- Copyright
- © 2020 The Authors
- Murdoch Affiliation
- Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Ecosystems; Harry Butler Institute
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:
Metrics
36 File views/ downloads
79 Record Views
InCites Highlights
These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Citation topics
- 3 Agriculture, Environment & Ecology
- 3.35 Zoology & Animal Ecology
- 3.35.796 Marine Mammal Ecology
- Web Of Science research areas
- Veterinary Sciences
- ESI research areas
- Plant & Animal Science