Is the culling of animals right? What are the pros and cons of culling animals? Well, here’s a detailed list of this practice’s benefits and drawbacks.
Culling is the process of selective elimination of animals based on traits or factors such as health, appearance, and sex. The aim is to reduce the population of a particular species to a specific number or only those with specific traits.
When supported by science and done in the right manner, culling offers many benefits to both humans and animals. However, a plan must be in place to help achieve the desired outcomes and mitigate the risks.
However, there are times when the culling of animals is driven by public hysteria and arbitrary reasons. When this happens, it poses great risks to animals, humans, and the entire ecosystem. But even with the best-laid plans, animal culling still has advantages and disadvantages.
Below are the ten important pros and cons of culling animals.
Advantages of Culling Animals
So, is culling animals good? The simple answer is yes, but if done right. Culling offers many potential benefits, as highlighted below.
1. Economic Benefits
The economic benefits of culling animals are top on this list of pros and cons. Before culling, it is important to consider these economic considerations, which need to be based on current scientific data.
To begin with, culling generates money through tourism, especially where wildlife is involved. Many tourists pay thousands of dollars for hunting expeditions to cull animals.
In Northern Australia, tourists can hunt crocodiles earmarked for culling. The same happens in North America, where tourists pay as much as 500 dollars to hunt White-tail deer.
Culling domestic animals also has economic benefits, especially in commercial farming. For example, in dairy farming, culling is important because it helps determine the cows’ economic performance.
Here, culling is done based on factors affecting cow performance, such as milk production, reproductive status, and diseases. Those with undesirable traits are culled, allowing farmers to drive profitability.
2. Achieving a Sustainable Population
Culling animals is also beneficial in helping maintain the ecosystem’s sustainability. This prevents habitat degradation, protects diversity, and reduces human-wildlife conflict. If a particular species’ population becomes too large, that species becomes a threat to themselves and other animals.
For example, between 1967 and 1994, South Africa culled a total of 14,562 elephants. Without this, it is estimated that the number of elephants would have increased to 80,000 by 2020, leading to mass starvation of the elephants and other animals.
In 2016, the country also decided to cull hippos in Kruger National Park after a drought. Without culling, all or most of them would have died of starvation.
Culling also helps to manage animals without natural predators. For example, bison are being culled in Yellowstone National Park. The deer population in the UK is also managed through culling. If these animals are left unchecked, they will completely alter or destroy their habitat.
3. Disease Reduction
Disease reduction deserves mention in the pros and cons of culling animals. Both domestic and wild animals can contract diseases when they come into contact with bacteria in soil, plants, or water. If not well handled, these diseases can decimate large animal and human populations.
Anthrax, for example, is spread by domestic and wild animals. It causes severe illness in animals and humans. When the disease is discovered, the best option is to cull the infected animals to prevent it from spreading.
Intensively farmed animals like poultry and pigs also play a big role in developing virulent diseases like swine flu and avian influenza (H5N1). These diseases are highly infectious and fatal for both animals and humans.
For example, the 1997–98 outbreak of the Nipah virus in Malaysia claimed the lives of over a hundred pig farmers and was curtailed by the culling of more than one million pigs.
The emergence of HPAI was also attributed to Asian poultry flocks. In case of an outbreak, one way to control the disease’s spread is to cull infected poultry.
4. Eliminating Animals that Pose a Serious Threat to Human Activities
Some animals seriously threaten or interfere with human activities such as farming, recreation, and even human settlement. In New Zealand, for example, after WWI, the emus multiplied so fast that they were dangerous to farmers.
As a result, they were classified as pests, and the government initiated efforts to cull them. Although hard to deal with initially, they were eventually brought under control when over 60,000 emus were culled in 6 months.
In Denver, Colorado, the famed Canadian geese also became a public nuisance at some point. Because of their huge population, they littered the city with thousands of pounds of feces every day, which required a lot of manpower to clean.
The feces also contaminate waterways, increasing the risk of diseases. Eventually, the state government decided to cull them, solving the problem.
White-tailed deer have become a threat to settlement in many suburbs across the US because they lack natural predators. This explains why this point could not be overlooked on our list of important pros and cons of culling animals.
5. Culling Keeps Surviving Animals Healthy
Like natural predation, culling also helps to keep the food web healthy. It involves targeting and eliminating sick or undesirable animals, strengthening the animal’s gene pool because only the fittest are allowed to survive.
For example, in Texas, scientists discovered that breeding among bucks with superior antler quality improved the antler quality of subsequent generations. As a result, hundreds of professional deer hunters have been employed to help eliminate those with undesirable antlers.
Culling is also done in dairy and beef farming to improve herd performance and produce quality. Those cattle considered to have defects are usually identified and killed. For example, cattle with health and fertility issues, poor milk or meat quality, or age effects are usually eliminated.
This helps to improve the overall genetic quality of the herd. Animal culling also prevents the spread of diseases that would destroy a particular species’ gene pool.
Disadvantages of Culling Animals
Because we’re examining the pros and cons of culling animals, it is important to address the question: Is calling animals bad? Below are five reasons why the practice is not 100% foolproof.
1. Culling Destroys Biodiversity by Harming Unrelated Species
As stated earlier, culling should be based on solid facts and a well-thought-out action plan. But even then, unintended consequences can arise, which affects biodiversity.
In South America, for example, vampire bats are responsible for the transmission of the deadly rabies virus. Therefore, many governments started culling them.
However, sometimes, they do not distinguish between the different types of bats. As a result, many insectivorous bats, which help reduce crop pests, have been killed.
A similar incident happened in New York in 1999 with the West Nile virus. The state government decided to spray pesticides targeting those mosquitoes that bite humans at night. However, it was later discovered that the major transmitters of the virus were daytime mosquitos, meaning they had been killing the wrong species.
In Australia, white sharks have caused several human fatalities. The government responded by using drum lines to cull great whites, which were responsible for the deaths. Unfortunately, of the 172 sharks that were killed, none were white sharks.
See Related: Great Hammerhead Shark
2. Unintended Ecological Consequences
Besides harming unrelated species, culling may have worse ecological consequences that may affect humans. One of the best examples of this took place in China. In 1949, diseases ravaged and killed hundreds of Chinese.
The government devised a program to combat the disease. One solution focused on culling four pests that were carriers of this disease: rats, sparrows, flies, and mosquitoes. Billions of them were killed.
Although the culling of sparrows helped to eliminate the disease, it hurt the ecosystem. Sparrows helped to regulate the population of locusts and other insect pests in rural China. Without sparrows, the locusts and pests destroyed a lot of grain, contributing to China’s Great Famine, which killed millions of people.
In Mauritius, the Mauritius flying fox had been causing great losses to farmers. As a result, the government started culling them. Unfortunately, instead of increasing yields, they went down, causing greater losses.
It was later discovered that the flying fox was the chief agent of pollination for more than half of the island’s plant life.
3. Ethical Concerns
The ethics of this practice are a major concern regarding the pros and cons of culling animals. Any contact with animals should always be humane. However, most approaches used when culling cause animals pain and suffering.
This is evident in the poultry industry, where almost half of the hatch chickens are usually male. But males can’t lay eggs or be sold for meat because of their small size. This means they have to be culled.
But the methods of culling chicks are inhumane. Some are suffocated in plastic bags, while others are electrocuted. Other farmers resort to crushing the chicks, an unethical practice.
Alternative ways of dealing with this problem should be established. For example, breeders can invest in technologies to establish whether an embryo is male or female before the eggs hatch.
The Canadian seal hunt is another example. Every year, thousands of seals are hunted down and killed as a way of controlling their population. However, the brutal way in which they are killed certainly needs to be rechecked.
See Related: Different Animals That Can’t Jump
4. It May Lead to an Increase in the Culled Species
In some situations, the number of culled species increases because of culling. So, instead of becoming the solution, culling compounds the problem. The feral cats of Tasmania are a case in point. Wildlife biologists in Tasmania wanted to reduce the population of feral cats. They set up traps to catch and kill the cats.
At first, things went well, and the population of feral cats started decreasing. However, after a while, new cats started appearing. As a result, the population of cats increased significantly. The same was observed in ferrets on a British island. The culling of ferrets led to a doubling of their population.
Scientists have explained that younger animals move in from the surrounding areas to replace the adults when the older dominant adults are culled. This leads to an explosion in population because the older ones are not there to chase away or kill the younger ones.
Also, removing some animals creates more space and food for those left, leading to a higher survival and reproduction rate.
See Related: Asian Lion
5. Culling Drives Extinction
Last but not least, on our list of pros and cons of culling animals is the role culling plays in the extinction of endangered animals.
Many of the world’s largest animals, such as elephants, sharks, whales, rhinos, and bears, are at risk of extinction. Their population, especially in the wild, is dwindling at a very fast pace. These large species of animals have low reproduction rates and take very long to mature, so culling only hastens the process of extinction.
For example, shark populations may take longer to recover after culls. Environmentalists have proposed banning shark culling and the use of drum lines because they threaten endangered species.
Also, as the culling of elephants continues in South Africa, many East African nations are struggling to increase their herds, many of which were killed in the 1980s. This should serve as a warning to those culling elephants. The Mauritius flying fox, another endangered animal, is also being decimated disproportionately.
If another way of controlling animal populations is not developed, many species might soon be wiped off the face of the earth. We should always establish the pros and cons of culling animals before imposing culling measures on any species.
FAQs
What does cull mean in animals?
Culling animals is the process of selectively removing animals from a population in order to control their numbers. This is often done to manage populations of wild animals that are damaging crops, habitats, or other wildlife. Culling can also be used in domestic animal populations to prevent disease spread or improve the genetic quality of a herd or flock.
What is the purpose of culling?
Culling is the act of selectively removing animals from a population to control their numbers. It is typically done to manage wildlife populations that have become overpopulated or invasive or to control the spread of disease among animals. The goal of culling is to maintain a healthy balance between the animals and their environment while also minimizing the negative impacts of overpopulation.
What does cull mean in cattle?
Culling in cattle is removing animals from a herd based on specific criteria. This is typically done to improve the overall health and productivity of the herd. Culling may involve removing animals that are no longer productive, have health issues, or do not meet breeding standards.
How is culling done?
Culling is the process of selectively removing animals from a population. It is typically done to control the population size or remove diseased or undesirable animals. Culling can be done through various methods, including hunting, trapping, or euthanasia. The specific method used depends on the type of animal being culled, the location, and the reason for culling.