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Sterilizing badgers to control bovine TB
Journal
Biodiversity and
Conservation, Volume 7, Number 6, June 1998, pp. 705-723(19) -
Kluwer Academic Publishers
Authors
Tuyttens F.A.M.; Macdonald
D.W. from the WildCRU, Department of Zoology, Oxford
Abstract
Sterilization has rarely been considered as an
alternative to culling or vaccination to control wildlife diseases.
Disease control by sterilization, as by culling, has most promise when
the host's ability for compensatory growth following the removal of
density-dependent inhibitions is limited, and when moderate reductions
in population density cause disproportionately large reductions in
disease prevalence, or even eliminate the disease. For many host/disease
examples this will not be the case and vaccination may have overwhelming
advantages or may be the only practical option. The impact of
sterilization on host density and disease prevalence will develop
relatively slowly because sterilization can prevent the recruitment of
only one age-cohort at a time. Moreover, unless there is vertical
transmission, this age-cohort will consist only of susceptibles. Culling, on the contrary, removes infected as well
as susceptible animals. However, for certain disease/host examples, the relative effectiveness of the different control strategies may be altered
considerably if their variable effects on the probability of disease
transmission are taken into account. Social perturbation or stress could render
certain culling strategies ineffective or even counter-productive. Depending on
how disease dynamics are influenced by the host's age-structure and reproductive
investment, fertility control could offer epidemiological advantages that have
been ignored by most disease/host models. We illustrate some of these principles
by investigating the theoretical and practical feasibility of an hypothetical
sterilization campaign to control bovine tuberculosis in badgers (and hence
cattle) in Britain.
Keywords
Meles meles; Mycobacterium bovis; fertility control;
wildlife disease; population control
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