Ecological research often requires inclusion of animals in studies designed to explore ecosystem function, autecology, or options for the management and longterm survival of wildlife species or populations under growing human pressures. Although modeling approaches are sometimes helpful, field studies of animals are typically the only way to test hypotheses and develop realistic management strategies in disciplines such as ecology, wildlife management, and conservation biology. Such research generally must be conducted in the wild. The Animal Welfare Act (AWA 1990), Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (NIH 2002), and the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (NRC 2011) determine what practices are acceptable in animal laboratory research but are almost completely silent about ?eld research. But like nature, bureaucracy abhors a vacuum. Regulations developed for laboratory environments and domesticated taxa are increasingly extrapolated to the ?eld, even though this extrapolation is typically inappropriate because of signi?cant differences between laboratory research and ?eld research on animals (Gannon et al. 2007). Laboratory and ?eld researchers face very different moral problems.
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