This paper addresses integrating welfare into conservation.

www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

This is for wildlife managers so they know there are ethical reasons to kill animals.

www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

I also have a manuscript arguing against welfare justified ecocide under review

A response is to dismiss ethics as silly arguments urban people with no connection to animals make. My aim is to show that ethics useful to all, it is a set of rules for negotiation. It allows everyone a common language to figure out what is right. The details are in the end where the real action is

Lots of animal management is not in academia. These people are increasingly getting contested by academics, and the public, on whether we should kill animals on ethical grounds. Even in cases where it is blindingly obvious it is the right thing to do.

Viagen’s experience in cloning pets has lead to probably the most successful deextinction project, the cloning of the black footed ferret. I am not sure how to feel about this model of bootstrapping conservation tech onto such markets but it can be effective.

There are major tensions on how to fund this work. The ‘dire wolf’ (not a project without any value) was, I think, made to hit this same market of bespoke pets and a proof of concept for VC funding. But the pressure to create profit can detract from good communication and conservation.

😂

Sorry to say Cambridge lost their own password to zoom and have ‘postponed’ the talk.