Protecting Wildlife Without Killing: A Call to Reform the Fox Vaccination Program in Greece

Red fox. Credit: Charles J. Sharp / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Animal payment groups successful Greece are protesting the aerial rabies programme for the reddish fox population, which they accidental volition extremity successful the unnecessary and unethical sidesplitting of hundreds of animals.

They launched a run to halt the programme that authorizes the systematic sidesplitting of these animals by hunters for a “bounty” of €75 per head, to verify the vaccine’s efficacy.

“The logic of ‘protecting’ a taxon lone to slaughter it arsenic a means of information postulation is an ethical paradox that the nationalist tin nary longer accept,” a petition connected Change.org says.

“We judge that conservation indispensable beryllium rooted successful the preservation of life, not the convenient termination of it for laboratory convenience.”

Greece arsenic a rabies-free country

The Ministry of Rural Development and Food (MRDF) officially recognizes Greece arsenic a rabies-free country, with nary cases recorded since 2014. “Given this status, the determination to proceed lethal “active surveillance” is not lone archaic but wholly disproportionate. It is simply a convulsive solution to a occupation that, by the Ministry’s ain data, is presently nether control,” the petition notes.

Animal payment groups accidental that modern subject provides the tools to show wildlife wellness without resorting to killing. They telephone connected the authorities to follow internationally recognized non-lethal methods, specified as:

• Enhanced Passive Surveillance: Rigorous investigating of animals recovered deceased from earthy causes oregon roadworthy accidents.
• Trap-Test-Release (TTR): Utilizing serological investigating connected unrecorded foxes that are safely trapped, sampled, and returned to the wild.
• Environmental Monitoring: Evaluating the intake of vaccine baits done non-invasive tract observations.

A telephone for coexistence

In an epoch wherever devastating wildfires person decimated Greece’s earthy habitats, each idiosyncratic carnal that survives is simply a captious constituent of our recovering ecosystem, the petition stresses. “We cannot advocator for the “protection” of wildlife portion simultaneously subsidizing its destruction.”

The activists telephone connected each applicable authorities to align Greek argumentation with modern ethical standards. “We indispensable regenerate lethal “check-and-kill” cycles with compassionate, science-based conservation.”

Related: A Fox Pays a Surprise Visit to the Acropolis successful Athens