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Female dingo in Oxley Wild Rivers NP, New South Wales Guy Ballard, CC BY-NC

From cats and foxes to goats and cane toads, invasive animals are one of Australia’s biggest environmental problems. Over the past few weeks, one Queensland council has been trying a new approach to controlling goats on an offshore island: introducing dingoes from the mainland.

But since dingoes were moved to Pelorus Island to kill goats, passions have overflowed for and against.

Queensland RSPCA chief executive Mark Townend was notable among the opposition. He stressed that his organisation is not against feral animal control, but opposes the “very cruel method” of using dingoes to achieve it.

Some people have also strongly objected to the implantation of poison capsules, containing sodium fluroacetate, into the Pelorus Island dingoes. This is intended to kill them after they have killed the goats.

In a rapidly changing world, people are trying new ways to save wildlife and help the environment. These strategies are forcing us to ask new, and sometimes difficult, ethical questions.

Changing world

Humans have created a global patchwork of degraded environments. Australia has the world’s worst mammal extinction record, as well as booming populations of invasive herbivores and ongoing problems with native habitat loss.

When it comes to managing invasive animals, Australians have often been quick to use lethal “pest” control. Methods include poisoning, trapping and shooting for livestock and wildlife protection, in attempts to reduce populations until impacts reach acceptable levels.

This approach does not sit well with many Australians and it has become common to see vocal opposition to wildlife culling programs that are perceived as indiscriminate, unnecessary or unacceptably cruel.

At the same time, there is increasing support for reintroducing native predators to help fix environmental problems.

Some experts in Australia have suggested that Australia should use dingoes to control invasive herbivores, red foxes and feral cats, following the example of our North American counterparts.

Some call it “rewilding”. Others simply see it as biological control. Regardless, a range of private and public land managers believe that dingoes should be Australia’s primary agents of ecosystem restoration.

Putting aside the debate about the likely success of such schemes, the issue of public acceptance remains. Proponents claim that using dingoes for environmental benefit is both “virtuous” and “free”. But the objections to the use of dingoes for feral goat control shows that there is still widespread dissatisfaction with getting dingoes to do our dirty work.

The ethics of killing

Every control technique has a welfare impact on wildlife, causing some pain and suffering.

We can measure objectively how well a technique works, but assessments of humaneness are always subjective. When people choose lethal control, we condemn animals to death.

Although it has been marketed as “compassionate conservation”, using dingoes for pest control means that other animals will be hunted, maimed and killed. This applies to the animals we want removed, such as goats, as well as to other wildlife that shares the habitat.

The future of using dingoes and other predators as pest controllers hinges on whether or not the public finds it acceptable. Do people draw a line between “natural” ways of killing invasive animals (with dingoes), and more artificial means (such as poison)?

We know, for instance, that dingo attacks can be extremely distressing for livestock producers.

Queensland RSPCA’s opposition to the Pelorus Island trial doesn’t mean an end to rewilding, but it is significant. It reminds us that welfare is an important issue for invasive animal control, regardless of whether humans or animals are doing the killing.

Some people find the notion of dingo-based pest control acceptable, even appealing, but others do not. Just as society expects that we carefully assess the use of poisons, traps or bullets, so too we should consider the welfare impacts of outsourcing death to dingoes and making them our tools for ecosystem management.

Guy Ballard is Project Leader for the Wild Canids in Agri-Ecosystems project, funded by the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre.

Peter Fleming receives funding from Australian and NSW Governments, and the Invasive Animals CRC. He is not affiliated with any political or industry organisation or think tank.

Ecosystem services – the natural processes that allow Earth to sustain life and provide us with everything we have and see – are facing an uncertain future.

Between 1997 and 2011, the global value of ecosystem services declined by up to US$20 trillion per year as a result of changing land use. To put that in context, the world’s entire GDP is currently just under US$74 trillion.

Our research shows that, in the Asia-Pacific region, this downward trend is likely to continue unless there are significant policy changes. By 2050, we predict that ecosystem service values could drop by 34% from their 2011 base value of US$13 trillion.

But, more optimistically, we also forecast that ecosystems could grow in value by 24% by mid-century, if policies are put in place to safeguard these crucial environmental values.

An Asian century (of ecosystems)

The Asia-Pacific region has historically followed the global trend in ecosystem depletion. But the future doesn’t have to be like the past. The decisions we make as a society will determine what our world will look like in that future.

With that in mind, our research focused on a range of land-use scenarios to try to forecast the consequences of various social, environmental and economic policies.

We used these scenarios to derive estimates of land-use change (urban, cropland, forest, grassland, wetland, desert), population, GDP and other variables such as inequality up to the year 2050. Changes in total value of ecosystem services in these scenarios were estimated to be due to two factors: the change in area covered by each ecosystem type; and the change in the “unit value” – the total value of all the marketed and non-marketed ecosystem services, per area, per year of each ecosystem type due to degradation or restoration.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Afghanistan shows the greatest potential losses and gains, as do other countries that are more susceptible to desertification. At the same time, these countries also have the greatest potential for reversing land degradation.

On the other hand, in this region, countries like Japan and New Zealand have the least potential for fluctuations in their ecosystem service values. This is because they are already highly developed and potentially have more stable climates.

Australia’s prospects

Australia, second only to China in ecosystem services value, also shows an extensive range of values among our four scenarios. Starting with a terrestrial ecosystem services value of US$3.4 trillion per year in 2011 (roughly three times Australia’s GDP that year), we forecast that by 2050 ecosystem services could grow in value by as much as 21%, or decrease by up to 29%.

This translates to either a gain of US$700 billion per year or a loss of US$980 billion per year – a figure that’s not far short of Australia’s current annual GDP.

The scenarios used incorporate a range of world views and policies, and the impacts of these on the entire, integrated system, including population, energy use, equity, environmental change, climate change and more. Our research features a country-by-country breakdown of the outcomes of each scenario, although it is impossible to separate out the impact of individual policies, especially given the differences in each country.

The consequences and solutions

The loss of ecosystem services will be felt most strongly by the poorest in any society, as they depend most directly on ecosystem services. They are the first to feel the effects when those services begin to disappear, and the least able to replace or ameliorate the loss. Increasing ecosystem services, on the other hand, would increase sustainable human well-being.

Around the world, the focus on ecosystem services has been growing quickly. Recent major policy reforms in this direction include a White House memo directing US federal agencies to incorporate ecosystem services into their planning, investment and regulations.

Other countries have also begun to incorporate ecosystem services in their policies. The European Union has mandated all member countries to produce national ecosystem service assessments, for use in policy and decision-making.

At the international level, the United Nations has set up an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, analogous in structure and function to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The international Ecosystem Services Partnership has also been established to co-ordinate and facilitate the exchange of information and expertise across the world.

We have taken ecosystem services for granted for far too long. The UN Sustainable Development Goals, adopted last year by all UN countries, include specific calls to promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, to halt and reverse land degradation, to ensure clean water and food security, as well as to safeguard life both on land and in the oceans.

If we are taking these goals seriously, we need to put natural capital and ecosystem services “on the books” as a major contributor to sustainable well-being.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

As Patrick Barkham says (Postcards from the hedge, 2 August) austerity is responsible for wild roadsides. But this is only partly so. Plantlife has for years campaigned for roadside verges to be left uncut until flowers have dropped their seeds, which can be as late as August or September. One cut can be ideal, with the proviso that visibility is maintained for road users. Dorset county council is following such guidelines and is experimenting with stripping topsoil to reduce fertility and introducing yellow rattle to inhibit vigorous grass growth. It is hoped that other local authorities will introduce such measures into their roadside maintenance schedules to help wildflowers that have been pushed from farmlands to the margins.
Paul Walker
Buxton, Derbyshire

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