Deer ManagementDeer Population Control
(Non-Lethal)
Brief History of Fertility Control Before Immunocontraception
This article is a reprint from the
Science and Conservation Center
The concept of wildlife fertility control
is not new and has been investigated for many years. Most of the work
was based on the fruits of human contraceptive research and therefore
mirrored human contraceptive technologies. This in turn meant that until
recently, the most common approach to wildlife contraception was through
the use of steroid hormones, and particularly natural and synthetic
estrogens, progestins, and androgens, similar to those found or used in
humans.
Zoos really led the way, administering
these compounds to captive animals, where delivery was not an issue, but
their use in free-roaming wildlife was another issue. These compounds
often worked, in a pharmacological sense, but they fell far short of the
standards that permit them to be used with free-roaming wildlife.
Basically they failed because
(1) they had to be given in extremely
large doses, ruling out remote delivery,
(2) they had to be administered too
often,
(3) they caused a variety of health
problems and pathologies in treated animals (see Munson et al. 2005),
(4) the cost was relatively high,
(5) they often had profound effects upon
social behaviors,
(6) they were often unsafe to administer
to pregnant animals, and
(7) they passed through the food chain to
predators � human and otherwise � and scavengers.
Because of these shortcomings, there was
little hope that they would ever be publicly acceptable for use in
free-roaming wildlife by regulatory agencies. (see Kirkpatrick and
Turner 1985, 1991a, 1995).
For more information, see
http://www.zoomontana.org/conservation_center/
Go on to: Characteristics of
the Ideal Wildlife Contraceptive
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