5^th International Symposium on Fertility

I was among several Pest Animal Control CRC scientists from CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems who attended the recent Fertility Control in Wildlife Conference in Kruger National Park.  My group had organised the previous conference held at Great Keppel Island in 1996 so we were all looking forward to the offerings of the venue in South Africa. 

I’ll come back to the actual conference content and impressions shortly – but first, what did we all see?  Some lucky people managed to see all of the Big Five (elephant, lion, leopard, rhinoceros, buffalo), though not all of them in Kruger National Park.  Although I managed to see only the lions and elephants, the hippos more than made up for missing the leopard etc.  I also saw giraffe, zebra, serval, hyena, wildebeest, impala, springbok, stenbok (but no Reeboks) and lots of interesting birds of various shapes, sizes and colours, not just LBJ’s.  The morning and evening game drives were great fun although there were too many images to search for – large and small rocks suddenly looked like beasts! Also it was hard to remember that you couldn’t just open the door of the vehicle and wander around in the bush Oz-style – the grizzly stories of the consequences were a great deterrent!

 The conference was attended by about 70 people, including researchers, animal welfare lobbyists, philosophers, park rangers and wildlife managers.

The opening address was given by Dr Richard Leakey who is a well known anthropologist and more recently a vocal senior government administrator in Kenya.  He described the dilemma of managing elephants throughout Africa, and noted that there was not much progress in the development of fertility control for this species.  While it is recognised that the impact of the elephant is high, there are conflicting views on how they should be managed.  Animal rights are considered important, but must be balanced with conservation of other species and the landscape – many people are advocating that there are universal rights and expectations for future generations which outweigh the immediate concerns of animal welfare and animal rights for elephants.  In Kruger National Park, the number of elephants threatens the biodiversity of the park as a whole.  Should animals be translocated?  There are many areas that, in the colonial era, were national parks which now have no wildlife (due to poachers).  But, is translocation more stressful than humane culling?  If there is culling who pays? Can the carcasses be used as a source of protein?  Culling may become politically unacceptable soon, given the “awareness” of death within elephant groups.  Another ongoing dilemma outside fenced parks is that subsistence farmers need to be protected from various wildlife depredations – therefore wild animal movements need to be restricted but this then increases local habitat destruction.  There is no easy solution!

Throughout the world, many native species are considered either as a commercial resource, worthless pests in intensive agriculture or priceless wildlife in national parks.  Introduced pests have a poorer profile again!  Development of fertility control for the management of pests has progressed marginally since the 1996 conference – many international groups are using whole porcine zona pellucida (PZP) proteins (the complex of proteins that surround the oocyte) to immunise animals to induce infertility.  While PZPs are generally effective in several species (eg white-tailed deer, horses, elephants), individuals to be immunised must be captured to be treated (and this may be required 2-3 times with boosts given every year).  It was agreed that single shot treatments would be more desirable and cost effective, but they are still to be designed and still need to be delivered in a cost effective manner.  For native pests this may also need to reversible contraception.  Some interesting and useful results using long-acting anti-gonadotrophin releasing hormone or progesterone implants were reported – again these techniques are appropriate for enclosed and accessible populations.

At the beginning of the conference the Humane Society US indicated that it will not support research on the development of oral delivery of fertility control (because it may not be species-specific), fertility control for predators (management of other species is preferable to predator control), or the use of transmissible viruses.  This view was not accepted by many of the conference participants!

The Pest Animal Control CRC’s work on the use of biological vectors for broad scale delivery of fertility control agents generated much interest and, as expected, some concerns about safety and ethics.  The various studies on modelling of fertility control reported by both the Pest Animal and Marsupial CRC scientists were well received.

Unfortunately there was too little opportunity to debate the ethical and safety concerns about the various techniques – partly because of the structure of the conference program, and partly because key participants were not always present during critical papers to defend their points of view.  As one scientist from the UK said “Australia must deal with its introduced pest problems …… given their rigorous legislation and processes for approval why do they need the approval of the US Food and Drug Agency?”

All in all an excellent experience!

 

 

Dr Lyn Hinds
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
GPO Box 284
Canberra
ACT 2601
Email:  lyn.hinds@csiro.au

 

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