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Wild Animals | General Considerations

The ASPCA would favor the development of governmental wildlife and wild places policies that promote the preservation and protection of habitat for wild animals and allow for healthy ecosystems, rather than human interventions, to achieve and maintain balance between prey and predator species. These policies should also reduce the need to protect people from wild animals. The ASPCA supports existing policies that protect as many wild species as possible from exploitation and extinction, with particular emphasis on endangered or threatened species native to the United States. The ASPCA acknowledges that without policies in place to preserve and protect habitat, ongoing encroachment into wildlife habitat makes it inevitable that some or even many wildlife species and populations must be   managed or controlled. In such cases, the ASPCA advocates that humane considerations be given priority and that management and control efforts begin with such strategies as humane barriers, contraception or humane trapping and relocation. Lethal control may be employed only as a last resort to alleviate suffering, protect human life or ensure the survival of an endangered species.