Teaching Sharks to Eat Invasive Fish - is it Ethical?

Sharks eating invasive fish, GPS-equipped raccoons and goats attracting a mate and then killing it. All are examples of animals being used to protect nature or other animals.

But is it ethically defensible? Maybe not, says a new study.

– It is presented as the animals doing something that is part of their natural behaviour. It is then considered nature-based, cost-effective and morally unproblematic. But it often involves more or less extensive human intervention,’ says Erica von Essen, a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

She and other researchers have analysed how animals are used to control and combat invasive and undesirable species and have concluded that there are doubts.

In the study, they discuss projects where goats and camels are fitted with GPS transmitters to find other animals of their own species. This makes it easier for hunters to locate and shoot them.

Looking for partners

In a Swedish project, invasive raccoons have been captured and sterilised, and then fitted with a GPS tracking device. The raccoons have been released into the wild to find a mate that can be killed by hunters. The same individual is released again to find a new potential mate.

This is successful in that it has reduced the population. The raccoon dog is difficult for hunters to find.

In another project, sharks were used to control an invasive lionfish in the Mediterranean. The problem was that the sharks were not interested in eating the fish at all.

– So divers were brought in and fed to the sharks to get them used to the flavor – quite an extensive human impact, says von Essen.

Ethical issues

Unlike laboratory animals in research, wild animals are not subject to the same ethical approval process. According to the researchers, they are considered more like temporary workers or freelancers who are released when the assignment is completed.

It may sound strange to talk about salary or pension, but one can imagine that the animals receive some kind of reward for the work they do in the service of humans. Instead, in some cases, they are killed when the job is done or if they make mistakes.