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PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Conserv. Sci.
Sec. Conservation Social Sciences
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcosc.2024.1488981
This article is part of the Research Topic Preventing Zoonoses. Promoting Biophilia. View all 3 articles

Wildlife Culling as a Biophobic Response to Zoonotic Disease Risk: Why We Need a One Health Approach to Risk Communication

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SI), Front Royal, United States
  • 2 Smithsonian Mason School of Conservation (SMSC), Front Royal, Virginia, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Zoonosesinfectious diseases that are transmitted between people and other animalsare one of the foremost public health threats. Public health messaging is a critical tool for informing at-risk communities about zoonotic disease threats and effective mitigation measures. Unfortunately, when not carefully crafted, public health messaging can foster fear-based (biophobic) responses to wildlife that may carry zoonotic pathogens-enculturating fear, disgust, and other forms of aversion. In worst case scenarios, biophobia of zoonotic hosts can result in humans culling wildlife populations or destroying their habitat. To better understand how public health messaging can responsibly provide necessary information on zoonoses risks while also promoting an affinity (biophilia) for potential zoonotic pathogen hosts, we conducted a literature review to identify cases of zoonoses-initiated wildlife culls and evaluated patterns and trends. We found that culls are frequently of native wildlife species, rather than nonnative species, and often increase threats to human health rather than mitigate them. We further found that the cultural impetus behind culls is rarely evaluated or discussed in the literature. Clearly, more research is needed in this regard. Human, animal, and environmental health are intertwined, and thus zoonoses prevention and mitigation is best addressed through a One Health lens. There is a need for public health and conservation professionals to collaborate in the development of risk mitigation messaging that enculturates effective zoonoses preventative measures, including biodiversity conservation.

    Keywords: Biodiversity, Fear, Messaging, Public Health, Zoonoses

    Received: 31 Aug 2024; Accepted: 08 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Anderson and Reaser. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: C. Jane Anderson, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SI), Front Royal, United States

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