Population Dynamics and Animal Welfare: Issues Raised by the Culling of Kangaroos in Puckapunyal

Population Dynamics and Animal Welfare: Issues Raised by the Culling of Kangaroos in Puckapunyal 期刊 Social Choice and Welfare 出版社 Springer Berlin / Heidelberg ISSN 0176-1714 (Print) 1432-217X (Online) 期 Volume 27, Number 2 / 2006年10月 文章類目 Original Paper DOI 10.1007/s00355-006-0137-8 頁 407-422 Subject Collection 商業和經濟 SpringerLink Date 2006年5月1日	添加入標記條目中 添加入購物車 添加入收藏條目中 Permissions & Reprints 推薦此文章

PDF (169.5 KB)Free Preview Original Paper Population Dynamics and Animal Welfare: Issues Raised by the Culling of Kangaroos in Puckapunyal Matthew Clarke1  and Yew-Kwang Ng1 (1)  School of Social Science and Planning, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne, VIC, 3001, Australia (2)  Department of Economics, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia Received: 28 June 2004  Accepted: 30 November 2005  Published online: 29 April 2006 Abstract  The culling of kangaroos at the Puckapunyal Army base (Australia) raises some intriguing ethical issues around animal welfare. After discussing the costs and benefits of the cull, this paper addresses the more general animal welfare issues related to population dynamics. Natural selection favours the maximization of the number of surviving offspring. This need not result in the maximization of the welfare of individuals in the species. The contrast between growth maximization and welfare maximization is first illustrated for a single population and then discussed in terms of competing populations. In the Lotka-Volterra model of competing species and its generalizations, the choice of different birthrates does not affect the population sizes at equilibrium. Welfare could be much higher at lower birthrates without even reducing numbers (at equilibrium).

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