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Teaching and Learning Resource (TLR)

1. Title

“Killer Rabbit Virus on the Loose”

2. Keywords

conservation; biological ‘pest’ control; scientific uncertainty; precaution; environmental values; contested knowledge.

3. Introduction

This TLR focuses on a controversial experiment in biological ‘pest’ control, directed at the European rabbit populations of Australia, and designed for purposes of conservation/ecosystem management (including protection of native flora and fauna, and prevention of soil erosion by rabbits). It invites students to examine a variety of perspectives on the science and values associated with the experiment. The TLR thereby promotes interdisciplinarity, values awareness and critical thinking in relation to an environmental issue of academic and vocational relevance.

4. Aim

This activity enables students to develop and demonstrate their understanding of the interaction between science and values in conservation/ecosystem management, and of the contested nature of knowledge claims advanced by stakeholders in this field.

5. Learning outcomes

Students who have successfully engaged with this activity will be able to provide critically informed, and environmentally relevant, comment on:

• the methodology of scientific field experimentation and the idea of scientific ‘reductionism’
• the uncertain nature of scientific knowledge, and the idea of ‘precaution’ in environmental policy/management
• the interaction of science and values in conservation/ecosystem management
• the idea of contested knowledge
• the ethics of inflicting suffering on sentient animals.

6. Pre-requisites

Some of the issues raised by this TLR could be addressed on the basis of ‘common sense’ and a grounding in ecological/conservation science. However it is intended that students should have had prior exposure to at least some of those major themes identified in the Learning Outcomes.

For most students in environmental higher education, it seems unlikely that the stated pre-requisites will be satisfied before undergraduate Level 3. However on programmes which include a substantial component of sociology and philosophy (or related disciplines), along with (at least) an introduction to ecology or environmental science, this activity could conceivably be tackled at undergraduate Level 2.

7. How to use TLR

This TLR could form the basis of an assignment and/or could be used to facilitate student-centred discussion.

For the latter, it is preferable that participants have prior access to the text and accompanying questions. Used in this way, the exercise is designed to operate interactively, and will probably lose efficacy with SSRs in excess of around 15:1. Where students have limited relevant experience on which to draw, team teaching could assist in stimulating debate. Conversely, more experienced students could initially work in small groups (perhaps of four or five), with limited supervision; a concluding ‘plenary’ session might then be arranged to allow each grouping to lead the discussion of one major point. Where appropriate, a simulated debate might be considered, along the lines of that outlined in “Water on the Moon” Part 1: Simulated Debate. For a more in-depth discussion, only one of the two main discussion questions suggested below (Instructions to students) might be examined. Depending on the format adopted and the students’ level of experience, between 60 and 90 minutes could be profitably devoted to the class-based exercise (i.e. excluding the private study element).

8. Instructions to students

1. Examine the scientific aims, methods and ‘knowledge claims’ associated with the experiment described in the passage below (Stimulus Material). Amongst other possible points consider:

• What are the major points of scientific disagreement?
• In what sense might the science behind the experiment be characterised as ‘reductionist’?
• In what ways (if any) did scientists apply a precautionary principle to their work? In your view, what (if anything) should a precautionary principle have led them to do differently?

2. Examine those principles of environmental philosophy and ethics which are raised by the experiment. Amongst other possible points, consider:

• What evidence is there to indicate the scientists’ view in this respect?
• What view would you have expected the animal liberation representative to adopt?
• What view would you expect a ‘conservation manager’ to adopt?
• Can you suggest other ways of managing the European rabbit in Australia, informed by other philosophical/ethical principles?

9. Stimulus Material

(Account derived from New Scientist 21 October 1995 p.4)

An experiment involving the release of a lethal rabbit virus on an island off South Australia has gone dramatically wrong. The virus has escaped from a high-security quarantined area, and reached the mainland. There are now fears that it could spread throughout Australia.

“This epitomises the problem of scientists trying to contain micro-organisms in the field”, says Bob Phelps of the Australian Conservation Foundation “The best laid plans can go seriously awry”.

Rabbits infected with rabbit calcivirus die from heart and lung failure within 40 hours of infection. First seen in China in 1984, scientists in Australia and New Zealand believe the virus could be used to control the population of the European rabbit , which is causing severe soil erosion in Australia and New Zealand and threatening native plants and animals. Laboratory experiments at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong near Melbourne tested the calcivirus on domestic and native animals. Results indicated that the virus did not infect these species. But before releasing the virus on the mainland, scientists with the CSIRO, Australia’s national research organisation, designed a field test on Wardang Island five kilometres off the Yorke Peninsula near Adelaide.

With funding from the Australian and New Zealand governments, the trial began in March 1995. A number of European rabbits were infected with the virus, and placed with uninfected rabbits, to test the infectivity and rate of spread of the virus. The researchers took elaborate security precautions to stop the virus spreading. They confined rabbits inoculated with virus in a 1 square kilometre pen behind two sets of double fences. Scientists had to change clothes after passing through each of the four fences. The AAHL’s experiments had shown that the rabbits should readily contract the disease from one another. At first, however, the virus spread very slowly. All this changed in September 1995, when large numbers of rabbits suddenly became sick, including those held in pens about 60 metres from the inoculated animals. This coincided with the arrival on Wardang of the Australian bushfly, blown in on high altitude winds from Queensland. The CSIRO scientists believe that the flies act as a vector for the virus, picking it up when feeding on proteins released from the tear ducts of sick rabbits.

Now the flies seem to have spread the virus to the mainland. Virologists at the AAHL confirmed that two rabbits brought to the laboratory from Point Pearce, the spot on the mainland closest to Wardang Island, have died of the viral disease. They were found during a search of the warrens along a 25 kilometre stretch of the coast. The search started when the virus broke out of the pen on Wardang Island. The escape of the virus has stunned biologists in Australia, who fear a public backlash against biological control experiments, “These events will raise suspicion”, says Jim Cullen, acting head of CSIRO Division of Entomology in Canberra. “Biological control in general could be affected”.

But the scientists responsible for the experiments at Wardang Island are choosing to see the escape in a more positive light. “The spread is extremely good news”, says Brian Walker, chief of the CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology. “It demonstrates that the virus will do what we want it to do in Australia - kill rabbits”.

The CSIRO points out that rabbit calcivirus is now found in 40 countries with no evidence of it causing disease in other species. Harvey Westbury, a virologist at the AAHL adds that experiments with mosquitoes and fleas suggest that the virus can only be transmitted by an insect for a few hours. “This will limit its spread”, he says. But not everyone is convinced. “We don’t know enough about the virus”, says Geoff Russell of the South Australian branch of Animal Liberation. “It’s from a class of virus that mutates very rapidly. Who knows what it might do in the Australian environment?”. Russell is also critical of laboratory experiments at the AAHL. “They used one strain to test the animals”, he says, “but next year’s virus may be different”. Phelps, meanwhile, blames the choice of island. “Releasing this virus so near the mainland was asking for trouble”, he says.

The project team is now trying to prevent further spread of the disease by poisoning the rabbits in the Point Pearce area and ripping up their warrens. About 20 000 doses of vaccine were imported from Europe in case the experiments went wrong, and these will be used if the virus spreads to domestic or farmed rabbits.

Nevertheless, some scientists fear that these efforts will be in vain, as infected bushflies will be blown about unpredictably by local winds. ‘It’s anyone’s guess how far the fly could travel’ says Cullen.

10. Degree stage

As indicated above (Pre-requisites) this TLR is intended primarily for students operating at academic Level 3 or above.

11. Resource requirements

Used as the basis of a student-centred learning activity, this TLR can operate in any ordinary teaching room. An overhead projector (with transparencies and marker pens) and/or flipchart (with marker pens) may be useful.

12. Preparation

As indicated above (Instructions to Students), preparation for this TLR involves reading the accompanying passage, along with an appropriate selection from the Recommended Reading list.

13. Links with other TLRs

Related TLRs include:

• Approaches in Environmental Ethics
• Environmental Risk and the Precautionary Principle

More generally, the aims and/or learning outcomes of this TLR are related to those of other TLRs listed in the following 'thematic clusters':

• Contested science
• Environmental risk
• Case studies

14. Follow-up activities

This TLR could conceivably be developed further as a simulation or role play activity. More advanced reading, in relation to one or more of the Learning Outcomes (see above), would also constitute appropriate follow-up work.

15. Recommended reading

Conservation and ecosystems

• Green, B (1985) Countryside Conservation (2nd ed). Chapman and Hall
  Chapter 1 is a straightforward introduction, on why we conserve: material benefits, cultural/scientific value, aesthetics, ethics, ecological balance etc.

• Commoner, B (1972) The Closing Circle: Confronting the Environmental Crisis. Jonathan Cape
  Chapter 1 (pp14-48) advances the view that everything is connected to everything else in the ecosphere, and that interference will have unseen consequences. See particularly his four laws of ecology.

• Shrader-Frechette K S and McCoy E D (1994) ‘How the tail wags the dog: how value judgements determine ecological science’. Environmental values, 3, pp 107-120

• Callicott, J B (1995) ‘The value of ecosystem health’. Environmental Values, 4, pp 345-361

Science: uncertainty and reductionism

• Chalmers, A F (1982) What is this thing called science? OUP

• Kuhn, T (1963) Scientific paradigms. In B Barnes (ed) Sociology of Science, Penguin, 1972

• Jones, A (1987) ‘From Fragmentation to wholeness: a green approach to science and society (part I)’. The Ecologist, 17 (6), pp 236-40
  Considers how the reductionist approach of science has led to a fragmented view of the world, and consequent problems.
  See also (by the same author) ‘From Fragmentation to wholeness: a green view of science and society (part II)’. The Ecologist, 18 (1), pp 30-34

• Wynne, B (1994) Scientific knowledge and the global environment. In M Redclift and T Benton (eds) Social Theory and the Global Environment (pp169-189). Routledge

• Sheldrake, R (1990) The Rebirth of Nature. Rider
  Chapter 2 traces the historical development of science, and of science’s mechanistic view of nature.

Precautionary principle

• Jones, P C and Merritt, J Q (2000) ‘Science and Environmental Decision-Making: The Social Context’. Chapter 3. In M Huxham and D Sumner, eds Science and Environmental Decision Making. Pearson
  Covers scientific uncertainty, environmental risk and the precautionary principle.

• O’Riordan, T and Cameron, J, eds (1994) Interpreting the Precautionary Principle. Earthscan

• O’Riordan T and Jordan, A (1995) ‘The precautionary principle in contemporary environmental politics’. Environmental Values 4, pp191-212
  Explains the core elements of the precautionary principle, and how it can be implemented.

Animal rights and environmental ethics

• Regan, T (1983) The Case for Animal Rights. Routledge

• Singer, P (1977) Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. Avon Books, NY. (Also published by Thorsons, 1991)

• Van De Veer (1979) ‘Interspecific Justice’. Inquiry, 22, pp55-79
  Looks at the various ways we can adjudicate between the interests of species. Covers a range of positions, from radical speciesism through to species egalitarianism.

• Taylor, P (extract from) Respect for Nature (Princeton, 1986). In Armstrong and Butler, eds (1993) Environmental Ethics: Divergence and Convergence. McGraw Hill
  Looks at ways of adjudicating between different claims, including principles such as self-defence, proportionality, minimum wrong, distributive and restitutive justice.

• Leopold, A. The Land Ethic (chapter from A Sand County Almanac, 1949). In Armstrong and Botzler, eds (1993) Environmental Ethics: Divergence and Convergence. McGraw Hill
  Advances the view that what preserves the integrity of the ecosystem as a whole is generally right. Argues for what is ethically and aesthetically right rather than what is economic. Proposes that the biotic community has intrinsic value.

• Callicott, J B (1993) ‘Animal liberation: a triangular affair’. In E Hargrove (ed) The Animal Liberation/Environmental Ethics Debate. Suny
  Contrasts the animal liberation argument with environmental ethics. Concludes that the land ethic is eminently practicable, since “by reference to a single good, competing individual claims may be adjudicated and priorities assigned to the myriad components of a biotic community.”

Journals

• Environmental Ethics. Published by Centre for Environmental Philosophy, the University of North Texas.

• Environmental Values. Published by The White Horse Press, Cambridge

• ECOS

Website

• http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/ento/wild/pestethi.htm
  “Animal welfare and vertebrate pest management: compromise or conflict”

16. Users' comments

• Some comments from the tutor of a module called ‘Basic Environmental Science (Master’s)’, taught to MA Social Research and the Environment students:

“The discussion did not really develop in the class. I felt this may have been due to the lack of knowledge students had on the subject of pest control, and also that the issues brought out in the text were not particularly complex. Hence, this TLR may be better suited to undergraduate students and might benefit from supplementary material on alternative pest control techniques. However I felt that it was useful in highlighting a relevant issue in environmental management.”