Conference Agenda

Conservation projects can be ethically challenging as they involve several value demands and different stakeholders —biodiversity, animals, and people— with different and competing interests. The ethical challenges have to be carefully addressed in order to support decision-making and prevent conflicts which, ultimately, can compromise the success of conservation projects. By addressing the various ethical dimensions involved in a conservation project, with the help of specific tools and methodologies, conservationists can strive for responsible and effective decision-making. Key factors to be considered include projects' effectiveness in achieving conservation goals, their compliance with legal and best practice standards, their integration within the social environment and local communities, their scientific quality and, last but not least, animal welfare considerations. Appropriate tools and methodologies are discussed herein, specifically developed and standardized for the ethical analysis and self assessment of ethical implications in conservation projects, maintaining a focus on case studies to show their appropriateness and usefulness in conservation practice. The application of a standardized ethical assessment can promote the consistency and comprehensiveness of conservation projects, while favoring communication among projects' partners and ultimately contributing to the preservation of biodiversity and the success of their actions.

Challenges in Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) management, especially when involving large carnivores, often revolve around conflicting ethical perspectives, needs and interests between different stakeholders, and can be exacerbated by media coverage that tends to sensationalise negative incidents. In this study, we applied an ethical tool, combined with media content analysis, to navigate these conflicts, focusing on a notable HWC scenario in the Trentino Region (Italy) involving the bear JJ4, responsible for a resident's death on April 5th, 2023. We collected media reports (n=274) from April to September 2023 using Google News, obtaining reported statements from eleven stakeholder categories, which were used to fill out an Ethical Matrix. The EM is a conceptual tool designed to assist decision-makers in navigating ethically intricate situations, categorising stakeholders’ moral demands across three principles: well-being, autonomy and fairness. Findings show a strong, ethically relevant imbalance in media representation of stakeholders’ opinions and interests, markedly emphasising conflicts between the region’s politicians and animal rights activists, while other categories’ ethical standpoints were largely less portrayed. This bias poses an obstacle to HWC management, which can be properly identified and addressed by applying ethical tools, contributing to a more equitable consideration of different stakeholders’ interests in the decision-making process.

Acting for the conservation of biodiversity can often confront us with mutually conflicting demands coming from different dimensions of ethics—the environmental, the animal, and the social. In such cases, setting up the decision-making process transparently and robustly can be crucial to achieving fair trade-offs. It is possible to facilitate this goal using conceptual tools for the ethical analysis. In this talk, I will describe how two well-known tools—decision trees and Bateson's cube—can be specifically tailored to analyze ethical conflicts in conservation and successfully employed to assist decision-making on ethically sensitive conservation scenarios. The use of ethical analysis tools does not remove the ultimate responsibility of the decision maker to choose a particular option from those available but it can make the process leading to the final decision more reasoned, participatory, and comprehensive—and, in the end, more just.

The 3Rs principles for animal research (Replace, Reduce, Refine) have become a part of many animal protection legislations worldwide and should be used in any research on animals. However, the process of incorporating the 3Rs principles into research outside of the laboratory settings has been unfortunately rather slow and their importance overlooked. We critically examined the implementation strategies of the 3Rs principles in wildlife research, based on a review of research protocols published between 2021 and 2023 across diverse species, ecosystems, and countries. The analysis revealed a broad spectrum of approaches in applying the 3Rs across different projects. Some research protocols demonstrate innovative strategies that can significantly reduce the impact on animal welfare. However, a notable segment of the studies still shows a lack of understanding and application of these principles. Our findings therefore underscore the importance of integrating the 3Rs more effectively in conservation research. We advocate for heightened awareness and improved implementation strategies, emphasizing the need for ongoing education and policy development in this area. This project not only sheds light on current practices but also aims to drive a shift towards more ethical and responsible wildlife research, aligning scientific pursuits with animal welfare considerations.