Immunocontraception and other fertility control methods offer humane alternatives to culling for managing overabundant wildlife populations, though with significant practical limitations.
Wildlife contraception represents a welfare-superior alternative to lethal culling for population management where it is practically feasible. Animals are not killed, injured, or subjected to the acute stress of lethal management. The welfare trade-off is the stress of capture and injection for treatment, which must be weighed against the long-term benefit of avoiding culling. Current practical limitations include cost, need for repeated treatment, and difficulty accessing free-ranging populations. As delivery technology including oral and dart-delivered contraceptives develops, the range of feasible applications will expand.