Culling - Wildlife

Wildlife

In the United States, hunting licenses and hunting seasons are a means by which the population of game animals is maintained. Each season, a hunter is allowed to kill a certain amount of wild game. The amount is determined both by species and gender. If the population seems to have surplus females, hunters are allowed to take more females during that hunting season. If the population is below what is desired, hunters may not be permitted to hunt that particular game animal or only hunt a restricted number of males.

Populations of game animals such as elk may be informally culled if they begin to excessively eat winter food set out for domestic cattle herds. In such instances the rancher will inform hunters that they may "hunt the haystack" on his property in order to thin the wild herd to controllable levels. These efforts are aimed to counter excessive depletion of the intended "domestic" winter feed supplies. Other managed culling instances involve extended issuance of extra hunting licenses, or the inclusion of additional "special hunting seasons" during harsh winters or overpopulation periods, governed by state fish and game Agencies.

Culling for population control is common in wildlife management, particularly on African game farms and in Australia in national parks. In the case of very large animals such as elephants, adults are often targeted. Their orphaned young, easily captured and transported, are then relocated. Without proper elephant socialization, young male elephants are believed to become unruly and extremely dangerous to other elephants, wildlife and humans. Culling is controversial in many African countries, but reintroduction of the practice has been recommended in recent years for use at the Kruger National Park in South Africa, which has experienced a swell in its elephant population since culling was banned in 1995.

In fishing tournaments, culling refers to releasing smaller fish that will not be used to count towards an angler's total weight. For instance, if an angler is allowed to weigh in only 4 fish, he might keep his first four 2 pound fish in the livewell until he starts to catch bigger fish. As he catches bigger fish, he can release (or cull) the smaller fish.

In certain cases culling may also be undertaken to check outbreak of certain viral or other infections and diseases among animals or birds. This has become widespread in India and some other East Asian countries where there are outbreaks of the deadly Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 among poultry. Huge numbers of chickens and some other fowls are being culled (as of December 2008) in order to contain spread of the avian flu.

Culling would require a lot of safety steps to be maintained in such cases of culling animals/birds since even a minor fault can cause the infections to spread out from the affected animals/birds to the population at large. Safety measures may include wearing special protective clothing and breathing apparatus to keep the workers culling the affected animals/birds from getting infected.