Mapping the Ethics Landscape for the Use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) in Conservation

What is it about?

One of the major human impacts on the environment is that some species are becoming rare or endangered. Many conservationists are concerned about this, and want to try to rebuild populations of these species. Doing this can be very difficult, especially when the species is low in numbers. One way of trying to grow such species populations is by using assisted reproductive technologies. Most people are familiar with some of these technologies from the human case – in vitro fertilization (IVF) for instance, is used to help people who have difficulties getting pregnant to conceive. A range of related technologies can be used with wild animals in an attempt to boost their populations. In this paper we consider a range of ethical issues that using these technologies with wild animals might raise. We look at concerns about the suffering of animals involved, and that some animals used in experiments to develop the technology might be killed. We also consider why conservationists want to use these technologies – why they think value of species and ecological processes is so important, and whether once artificial reproductive technology has been used, we can still think of the animals involved as “wild”. We examine whether and when the use of these reproductive technologies in wild animals is ethically acceptable, and we argue that each case has to be considered and judged on its own merits.

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