Control hunting of wild animals: health, money, or pleasure?

Abstract

In many parts of the world, millions of wildlife species are hunted for sport, food, skins, and other products. In recent years, a backlash has emerged from certain groups of society against this long-standing human pursuit. However, attitudes towards the control of wild animals to reduce the health risk to other animals, to lessen agricultural damage, or to protect game species, may generate a different reaction, where even killing is tolerated. In this paper, we analyze the public’s acceptance of control hunting in Andalusia (southern Spain). Our results suggest that lethal control to improve domestic animal health is highly accepted (75%) is more controversial when animals are killed for damaging crops (59% acceptance) and is highly unaccepted when the goal is to enhance game species numbers (22% acceptance). Older people and males, in particular, accept more readily some of these control-hunting measures. These results are needed to understand better the public attitudes on which conservation managers can base their decisions when control hunting is required.