ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Elephants on Birth Control? Population Management Between Animal Welfare Activism and Conservation Science

• In Event: Controlling and Conserving Animals

English Abstract

For decades, zoo keepers have used birth control to prevent the growth of captive animal populations; veterinarians to reduce the numbers of strays in urban spaces; and biologists to manage invasive and otherwise pestiferous species. In these cases, scientists typically frame birth control methods as non-lethal alternatives to euthanasia or outright extermination, and thus as beneficial to animal welfare. The headline-grabbing rollout of rat birth control initiatives in major U.S. cities like New York and San Francisco reflects this logic: while the outcome of reduced rat numbers is the same in either case, it is much better for a rat to ingest an oral contraceptive and be prevented from giving birth than for a rat to ingest a poison that will slowly kill them. But the possibility of birth control’s deployment as an animal welfare tool has recently spread beyond these life-or-death scenarios. Some animal ethicists have begun to argue that birth control would improve the wellbeing of wild animals writ large (Horta 2023; Liedholm, Hecht, and Elliott 2024), while major animal welfare foundations like Animal Charity Evaluators and Wild Animal Initiative have started to fund wildlife birth control research as a means of reducing animal suffering. This paper traces the history of the movement of birth control from traditional conservation science to animal welfare activism and back again. It probes the place of population in the discourse around animal suffering and environmental flourishing. And it brings insights from disability studies and feminist care ethics to bear on the role of reproductive control in more-than-human relationships.

Author

• Kat Poje, New York University