Coping With Human-Cat Interactions Beyond the Limits of Domesticity: Moral Pluralism in the Management of Cats and Wildlife

Although human interactions with cats are often even typically analyzed in the context of domesticity, with a focus on what sorts of interactions might make both people and cats “happy at home,” a large number of cats in the world live, for one reason or another, beyond the bounds of domesticity. Human interactions with these more or less free-living cats raise deeply controversial questions about how both the cats and the people they interact with should be sensibly managed, and about the moral imperatives that ought to guide the management of their interactions through the laws and public policies regulating both human interactions with pets and with wildlife. We review the geography of human interactions with cats living beyond the bounds of domesticity. We acknowledge the contributions made to ideas about how to manage cats by the animal protection movement. We review the tensions that have emerged over time between advocates for the eradication of free-living cats, because of the impacts they have on native wildlife species, and those who have imagined alternatives to eradication, most notably one or another variant of trap-neuter-return (TNR). The conflict over how best to deal with cats living beyond the bounds of domesticity and their wildlife impacts raises the prospect of stalemate, and we canvass and critique possibilities for moving beyond that stalemate.

Quantifying the impacts of oil sands development on wildlife: perspectives from impact assessments

Anthropogenic landscape disturbances, including industrial development, can have significant impacts on wildlife populations. In Canada, federal, territorial, and provincial laws require major industrial development projects to submit detailed environmental impact assessments (EIA) reports as part of the project application process. These assessments are meant to establish baseline habitat conditions and predict which landscape components will be altered by the project and to what degree. Based on these changes, indirect predictions for wildlife impacts are made using a variety of models, which can vary in validation adequacy and often rely heavily on expert opinion. In the oil sands region of Canada, wildlife species and habitat types used to make predictions are not comprehensive nor standardized between EIAs, despite a high degree of landscape similarity between projects. We extracted habitat model parameters, projected impacts, and anticipated mitigation effectiveness from 30 project EIAs. Despite all these projects occurring in the same natural region, we found very little agreement in the species used to assess wildlife impacts as well as the parameters used to model impacts on those species. Relative to unvalidated habitat models, we found that models receiving independent validation required half the habitat amount for proponents to conclude that the project will have an adverse effect. Our analyses have exposed many areas where policy could improve the efficiency of the EIA process as well as the scientific rigour underlying regulatory decisions.

Beyond conflict: exploring the spectrum of human–wildlife interactions and their underlying mechanisms

Humans have lived alongside and interacted with wild animals throughout evolutionary history. Even though wild animals can damage property, or injure humans and domesticated animals, not all interactions between humans and wildlife are negative. Yet, research has tended to focus disproportionately on negative interactions leading to negative outcomes, labelling this human–wildlife conflict. Studies have identified several factors, ranging from gender, religion, socio-economics and literacy, which influence people's responses to wildlife. We used the ISI Web of Knowledge database to assess quantitatively how human–wildlife interactions are framed in the scientific literature and to understand the hypotheses that have been invoked to explain these. We found that the predominant focus of research was on human–wildlife conflict (71%), with little coverage of coexistence (2%) or neutral interactions (8%). We suggest that such a framing is problematic as it can lead to biases in conservation planning by failing to consider the nuances of people's relationships with wildlife and the opportunities that exist for conservation. We propose a typology of human responses to wildlife impacts, ranging from negative to positive, to help moderate the disproportionate focus on conflict. We suggest that standardizing terminology and considering interactions beyond those that are negative can lead to a more nuanced understanding of human–wildlife relations and help promote greater coexistence between people and wildlife. We also list the various influential factors that are reported to shape human–wildlife interactions and, to generate further hypotheses and research, classify them into 55 proximate (correlates) and five ultimate (mechanisms) factors.