Contraception is increasingly used as a humane alternative to culling for managing wildlife populations. Understanding its welfare implications helps evaluate this approach to population control.
Wild animal contraception represents a genuinely welfare-positive alternative to lethal management where it is logistically feasible. The welfare costs of darting for annual boosters are real but brief, compared to the welfare costs of lethal control or the suffering associated with population overshoot and starvation cycles. Logistical challenges — access to populations, cost, and personnel — currently limit contraception to managed reserve or semi-captive populations. Expanding the toolkit of humane population management methods is an important animal welfare research priority.