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Abstract
<p class="first" id="d9944290e62">Much progress has been made toward assessing and
improving animal welfare in conservation.
However, several glaring knowledge gaps remain where animal-welfare concerns exist
but animal-welfare studies have not been performed in politically sensitive contexts.
Based on contemporary issues in Australia, we identified 4 topics that require more
research: animal-welfare oversight for operations designated as management (as opposed
to research); animal-welfare impacts of biological agents used to control invasive
animals; welfare of animals hunted recreationally; and animal-welfare impacts associated
with indigenous wildlife use. Animal-welfare science may be applied to these sensitive
topics through simple quantitative studies (e.g., quantifying the frequency of adverse
animal-welfare events). Several such studies have effectively addressed animal-welfare
concerns in similarly contentious contexts, including feral camel (Camelus dromedarius)
culling in Australia, recreational hunting in Scandinavia, and indigenous whale hunting
in the United States. For discussions of animal welfare in conservation to be evidence-based,
courageous research is required in the 4 key areas we identified.
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