Wildlife health 2.0: adaptability versus certainty

Wildlife health research has historically focused largely on the question of “how does this work” rather than “what can I do to be helpful now?” The rate and scale of change affecting the health and sustainability of... [ view full abstract ]

Wildlife health research has historically focused largely on the question of “how does this work” rather than “what can I do to be helpful now?” The rate and scale of change affecting the health and sustainability of wildlife is accelerating and being compounded by climate change. Can wildlife afford to wait for scientific certainty before action is taken to protect and sustain their health? Society has an array of choices to make about the quality of our lives and the state of the environment. Wildlife health practitioners and policy-makers working to sustain wildlife health are increasingly seeking support to make thoughtful program and policy choices with limited resources. Decision-makers must integrate different dimensions when planning to act; suggesting that science is not the only legitimate source of wildlife health knowledge. Moreover, reality moves faster than the production of scientific knowledge, leaving the researcher playing catch-up rather than leading decisions. Effective health research does not make healthy wildlife but rather creates the conditions for wildlife to be healthy. As sustainability is ultimately the science of human choice, wildlife health research must adopt an action-research agenda that no longer sees people and human activity as a threat that can be overcome with empirical science, but rather as a partner in a socio-ecological system which is increasingly being shaped by human decisions. This presentation will draw on evolving definitions of wildlife health and combine them with current scholarship of behavior change, ecohealth and health promotion to propose a knowledge-to-action agenda to protect and sustain wildlife health.