Library
Browse resources published by our research team.
In addition to full texts of our peer-reviewed articles, our library includes research digests that break down our peer-reviewed articles; in-depth reports that thoroughly examine a topic; commentaries that explain the significance of particular issues in wild animal welfare science; and short communications that briefly survey a field or topic.
Wild Animal Initiative adheres to Open Science TOP Guidelines. Read more here.
Improving wild animal welfare through contraception
Simon Eckerström Liedholm, Luke Hecht, Vittoria Elliott
Eckerström Liedholm, S., Hecht, L., & Elliott, V. (2024). Improving wild animal welfare through contraception. BioScience, 74(10), 695–700. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae071
Wildlife contraception and welfare
Simon Eckerström Liedholm discusses why contraception is a promising tool for improving wild animal welfare, and what further research is most urgently needed.
Improving pest management for wild insect welfare
Hollis Howe
Why should you care about insect welfare? Hollis Howe summarizes the literature on invertebrate sentience, estimates the number of insects affected by agricultural insecticide use, and describes the effects of common insecticidal compounds and other pest control methods.
Long-term design considerations for wild animal welfare interventions
How persistent and reversible should our interventions be? Simon Eckerström Liedholm explores two important factors in assessing the merits of interventions to improve wild animal welfare.
Optimal population density: trading off the quality and quantity of welfare
Luke Hecht explains how, in some cases, reducing wild animals’ population densities by relatively small amounts might facilitate large increases in their welfare.
Age-specific survivorship frames the expected value of wild animal welfare
This research note is an extension of Luke Hecht’s paper, The importance of considering age when quantifying wild animals’ welfare, which was published in Biological Reviews in December 2021. Luke introduces “welfare expectancy” as a framework for summing up the different levels of well-being animals might experience over the course of their lives, helping to compare the welfare consequences of interventions and natural pressures that may disproportionately affect animals of particular ages.