Field work ethics in biological research

Abstract

Biological Conservation recently rejected a paper because we regarded the killing of thousands of vertebrates in a protected area as unnecessary and inappropriate. The authors had the required approvals from the conservation authorities for this work and argued that alternative non-harmful methods, such as camera-traps and baited video, or capture-release methods, would be too time-consuming and expensive because of the species' low population density. Since then, one of us declined to review another paper also on ethical grounds. This second study similarly used indiscriminate methods to kill hundreds of vertebrates in a protected area. In a third case, a paper was rejected because its capture-release data showed high mortality in vertebrates tagged for the study. These papers intended to demonstrate phenomena already known from other studies in different locations. In our opinion, these studies provided poor justification for harming species where the research simply confirmed a well-known phenomenon (e.g., species abundance increases when they are protected) for another location or species. Although the need to recognise the ethical issues of ecological field work has been highlighted more than once previously (e.g., Farnsworth and Rosovsky, 1993, Marsh and Kenchington, 2004), it seems they are not being universally addressed.

We urge scientists to conduct research in ways that are respectful to nature, and minimise harm to species and ecosystems. We discuss some of the ways that government regulations, journal policies, education practices, and individual researcher behaviour can contribute to more environmentally ethical practice. “Ethics” is widely defined as a theory of morality that guides individual and collective behaviour (e.g., Fuchs and Macrina, 2005, Jax et al., 2013) but is subject to different interpretations and debate (e.g., Fazey et al., 2005, Wallace and Curzer, 2013). We recognise that the damage to biodiversity caused by research is almost always minor in comparison to the widespread and extensive damage caused by other activities, such as logging, farming, fishing, mining, water pollution, ranching, and urbanization. However, scientific methods should minimise disturbance and stress to biodiversity, and any impacts should be explicitly justified.