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Militarisation of conservation (sometimes known as 'green militarisation') is an issue of growing international interest. Rhino horn is immensely valuable (in 2013 its value exceeded that of gold or cocaine), and its illegal trade has attracted widespread attention. Conservationists have declared a 'war' on poaching, with extensive military resources deployed to combat it. This sometimes includes operations which are referred to, particularly in the media, as 'shoot-to-kill'. These can be tantamount to extra-judicial killings. We scrutinise this issue using 'Just War' principles, to explore whether the 'war' on poaching meets the criteria expected of armed conflict. Our perspective suggests that it fails both ethical and pragmatic examination. This piece encourages conservation scientists, and the public, to consider which actions are justified in protecting wildlife, and how we should rethink conservation policy to achieve ethical, successful outcomes for both people and wildlife.

Simple Summary Acting to preserve biodiversity can involve harming individual animals. It has recently been argued that conventional practice has placed too much emphasis on the preservation of collective entities, such as populations and species, at the expense of suffering for individuals. At least some advocates of the ‘Compassionate Conservation’ movement find any deployment of lethal measures in the interests of conservation to be unacceptable. This shifts the balance of priorities too far. While conservationists have a duty to minimise harm, and to use non-lethal measures where feasible, there will be serious implications for conservation if this movement were to be widely influential. Furthermore, the ‘do-no-harm’ maxim the compassionate conservationists advocate does not always promote the welfare of individual animals. Abstract Human activity affecting the welfare of wild vertebrates, widely accepted to be sentient, and therefore deserving of moral concern, is widespread. A variety of motives lead to the killing of individual wild animals. These include to provide food, to protect stock and other human interests, and also for sport. The acceptability of such killing is widely believed to vary with the motive and method. Individual vertebrates are also killed by conservationists. Whether securing conservation goals is an adequate reason for such killing has recently been challenged. Conventional conservation practice has tended to prioritise ecological collectives, such as populations and species, when their interests conflict with those of individuals. Supporters of the ‘Compassionate Conservation’ movement argue both that conservationists have neglected animal welfare when such conflicts arise and that no killing for conservation is justified. We counter that conservationists increasingly seek to adhere to high standards of welfare, and that the extreme position advocated by some supporters of ‘Compassionate Conservation’, rooted in virtue ethics, would, if widely accepted, lead to considerable negative effects for conservation. Conservation practice cannot afford to neglect consequences. Moreover, the do-no-harm maxim does not always lead to better outcomes for animal welfare.

Trophy hunting plays a significant role in wildlife conservation in some contexts in various parts of the world. Yet excessive hunting is contributing to species declines, especially for large carnivores. Simulation models suggest that sustainable hunting of African lions may be achieved by restricting offtakes to males old enough to have reared a cohort of offspring. We tested and expanded criteria for an age-based approach for sustainably regulating lion hunting. Using photos of 228 known-age males from ten sites across Africa, we measured change in ten phenotypic traits with age and found four age classes with distinct characteristics: 1-2.9 years, 3-4.9 years, 5-6.9 years, and ≥7 years. We tested the aging accuracy of professional hunters and inexperienced observers before and after training on aging. Before training, hunters accurately aged more lion photos (63%) than inexperienced observers (48%); after training, both groups improved (67-69%). Hunters overestimated 22% of lions

The unique wildlife of the Ewaso Nyiro and valuable services that the ecosystem provides for humans (e.g., clean water and productive grasslands) cannot be conserved by working solely on traditional conservation strongholds such as the national reserves and private ranches of central Laikipia. To reach objectives for conserving wildlife, stakeholders must work to preserve wildlife habitat and corridors in the surrounding human-dominated landscape—a daunting task considering the complexity of working at large spatial scales (e.g., many landowners, competing land uses) and limited conservation resources available. Systematic, landscape-scale conservation planning helps stakeholders set meaningful and transparent objectives, identify where to work to meet those objectives, and prioritize areas for immediate investment. We describe results and implications of an initial landscape-scale planning exercise for the Ewaso Nyiro that culminated in a workshop in January 2006. Forty participants selected nine focal features, set quantitative objectives for four of them (elephants, Grevy’s zebra, lions, wild dogs), and set spatial conservation priorities for the entire landscape on the basis of complementary needs of critical species. The modest objectives for these species (e.g., maintaining a population of 300 wild dogs) cannot be met by conservation focused solely on traditional strongholds. The exercise indicated that nearly 84% of the landscape needs conservation investment, and it identified three near-term priorities: (1) maintain current investments in conservation strongholds, (2) increase investment to secure the narrow corridor between Samburu and Laikipia Districts, and (3) increase investment to secure portions of Samburu District, including the Matthews Range. The results we describe represent the initiation of a land use planning process that, if continued, can help meet both biodiversity and livelihood development objectives. We recommend this process be carried forward in the Ewaso Nyiro and then in similar ecosystems in Kenya and eastern Africa. Karl A. Didier, Global Conservation Programs, Wildlife Conservation Society, Gainesville, FL, USA. Alayne Cotterill, Living with Lions and the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford, Nanyuki, Kenya. Iain DouglasHamilton, Save the Elephants and Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Nairobi, Kenya. Laurence Frank, Living with Lions, Panthera, New York, NY, USA; and Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Nicholas J. Georgiadis, Property and Environment Research Center, Bozeman, MT, USA. Max Graham, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. Festus Ihwagi, Save the Elephants, Nairobi, Kenya. Juliet King, Northern Rangelands Trust, Isiolo, Kenya. Delphine MalleretKing, Laikipia Wildlife Forum, Nanyuki, Kenya. Dan Rubenstein, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. David Wilkie, Global Conservation Programs, Wildlife Conservation Society, Waltham, MA, USA. Rosie Woodroffe, Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA. Correspondence: K. A. Didier, kdidier@wcs.org. Expanded author information follows the Acknowledgments section. Manuscript received 7 January 2009; accepted 18 May 2010. 1 0 6 • S M I T H S O N I A N C O N T R I B U T I O N S T O Z O O L O G Y

Conservation projects may be reluctant to attempt Systematic Conservation Planning because existing methods are often prohibitive in the time, money, data, and expertise they require. We tried to develop a “resource light” method for Systematic Conservation Planning and applied it to the Ewaso Ngiro Landscape of central Kenya. Over a 6-month preparation period and 1-week participatory workshop, we used expert assessments to select focal biodiversity features, set quantitative targets for these, map their current distribution, vulnerability, potential for recovery, and conservation costs, and, finally, map cross-feature conservation priorities. Preparation for and facilitation of the workshop required time investment by one part-time workshop coordinator, eight workshop committee members, six ecosystem experts, and two GIS technicians. Total time investment was approximately 56.5 person-weeks spread over facilitators and 40 workshop participants. Monetary costs for the workshop were approximately $US 42,000, excluding investments made by researchers previous to this project. Costs for a similar workshop could vary substantially, depending on need to cover salaries, international travel, food and lodging, and the number of participants. To stay within our resource constraints, we completed the exercise for only four of nine focal biodiversity features and did not negotiate trade-offs between conservation and human land-uses or use planning software to identify “optimal networks” of conservation areas. These were not considered critical for conservationists to try Systematic Conservation Planning, introduce landscape-scale conservation concepts to stakeholders, and begin implementing landscape conservation strategies. Participants agreed that further work would be needed to complete and update the planning process. Due to the lack of comparative cost data from similar planning exercises, we cannot definitively conclude that our approach was “resource light”, although we suspect it is within the constraints of most site-based conservation projects.