The moral residue of conservation

The use and abuse of moral theories in conservation debate about killing animals

Recent ethical debate about compassionate conservation has invoked moral theories to oppose or support traditional practices of killing animals to protect biodiversity and ecosystems. The debate has featured the mainstream moral theories of consequentialism and utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. We identify problematic applications and critique of these moral theories in conservation discussions. Problems include a lack of clarity when invoking moral theories, misunderstanding and mischaracterizing theories, and overlooking features and circumstances affecting a theory's application. A key omission in the debate is a detailed discussion of the moral significance of animals and nature. We then examine the role of moral theory as such in ethical discussion, contrasting moral theory with ethical outlooks that center, for example, forms of love and care. Our aim is to advance the ethical debate about harming animals in conservation.

Animal agency in wildlife conservation and management

Wildlife conservation and management (WCM) practices have been historically drawn from a wide variety of academic fields, yet practitioners have been slow to engage with emerging conversations about animals as complex beings, whose individuality and sociality influence their relationships with humans. We propose an explicit acknowledgement of wild, nonhuman animals as active participants in WCM. We examined 190 studies of WCM interventions and outcomes to highlight 3 common assumptions that underpin many present approaches to WCM: animal behaviors are rigid and homogeneous; wildlife exhibit idealized wild behavior and prefer pristine habitats; and human-wildlife relationships are of marginal or secondary importance relative to nonhuman interactions. We found that these management interventions insufficiently considered animal learning, decision-making, individuality, sociality, and relationships with humans and led to unanticipated detrimental outcomes. To address these shortcomings, we synthesized theoretical advances in animal behavioral sciences, animal geographies, and animal legal theory that may help conservation professionals reconceptualize animals and their relationships with humans. Based on advances in these fields, we constructed the concept of animal agency, which we define as the ability of animals to actively influence conservation and management outcomes through their adaptive, context-specific, and complex behaviors that are predicated on their sentience, individuality, lived experiences, cognition, sociality, and cultures in ways that shape and reshape shared human-wildlife cultures, spaces, and histories. Conservation practices, such as compassionate conservation, convivial conservation, and ecological justice, incorporate facets of animal agency. Animal agency can be incorporated in conservation problem-solving by assessing the ways in which agency contributes to species' survival and by encouraging more adaptive and collaborative decision-making among human and nonhuman stakeholders.

Re-Thinking Felid–Human Entanglements through the Lenses of Compassionate Conservation and Multispecies Studies

Simple Summary

Felids have long and complex historical associations with humans, ranging from fear and persecution to worship and care. With many felid species in widespread decline, re-thinking the messy entanglements of feline predators and human societies is a necessary step for fostering coexistence as current conservation frameworks that rely on the separation of people from nature are failing felids. Here, we explore two distinct but related interdisciplinary fields that, when put into dialogue with one another, offer novel perspectives and insights on felid–human relationships and conservation initiatives more broadly. We identified numerous similarities and emergent properties within compassionate conservation and multispecies studies, despite these fields arising from the sciences and social sciences and humanities respectively. Combined, reorientation of conservation values and practices to be morally inclusive of individual animals and their subjective experiences has the potential to support cohabitation and tolerance for felids, promoting multispecies flourishing.

Abstract

With many felid species in widespread decline, re-thinking the messy felid–human entanglements is a necessary step for fostering coexistence as current conservation frameworks centered on human exceptionalism and widespread violence toward wild animals are conspicuously failing felids. This paper argues for fostering a critical awareness of how we understand our relationships with nonhuman animals, particularly in the context of conservation. We bring two distinct but related interdisciplinary fields into a dialogue to critically question the values and conceptual assumptions that frame the practices of felid conservation today. Compassionate conservation and multispecies studies share many synergies and conceptual overlaps despite emerging from different academic domains. We identified four key areas for further exploration: (1) A shift in emphasis from practices of killing to the underlying assumptions that make forms of killing permissible and ethically unproblematic. (2) Re-engagement with individuals, not just species, in conservation settings. (3) Unsettling human exceptionalism through an emphasis on the agency of animals and an ethic involving compassion. (4) Acknowledging the ways in which humans co-become with other animals and cultivating relationships of multispecies cohabitation and flourishing.

Compassionate Conservation is indistinguishable from traditional forms of conservation in practice

Animal welfare and ethics are important factors influencing wildlife conservation practice, and critics are increasingly challenging the underlying ethics and motivations supporting common conservation practices. “Compassionate Conservationists” argue that all conservationists should respect the rights of individual sentient animals and approach conservation problems from a position of compassion, and that doing so requires implementing practices that avoid direct harm to individual animals. In this way Compassionate Conservationists seek to contrast themselves with “Traditional Conservationists” who often express consequentialist decision-making processes that ostensibly aim to dispassionately minimize net animal harms, resulting in the common use of practices that directly harm or kill some animals. Conservationists and other observers might therefore conclude that the two sides of this debate are distinct and/or that their policy proscriptions produce different welfare outcomes for animals. To explore the validity of this conclusion we review the ethical philosophies underpinning two types of Compassionate Conservation—deontology and virtue ethics. Deontology focusses on animal rights or the moral duties or obligations of conservationists, whereas virtue ethics focusses on acting in ways that are virtuous or compassionate. We demonstrate that both types permit the intentional harm and killing of animals when faced with common conservation problems where animals will be harmed no matter what the conservationist does or does not do. We then describe the applied decision-making processes exhibited by Compassionate Conservationists (of both types) and Traditional Conservationists to show that they may each lead to the implementation of similar conservation practices (including lethal control) and produce similar outcomes for animals, despite the perceived differences in their ethical motivations. The widespread presence of wildlife conservation problems that cannot be resolved without causing at least some harm to some animals means that conservationists of all persuasions must routinely make trade-offs between the welfare of some animals over others. Compassionate Conservationists do this from an explicit position of animal rights and/or compassion, whereas Traditional Conservationists respect animal rights and exhibit this same compassion implicitly. These observations lead to the conclusion that Compassionate Conservation is indistinguishable from traditional forms of conservation in practice, and that the apparent disagreement among conservationists primarily concerns the effectiveness of various wildlife management practices at minimizing animal harm, and not the underlying ethics, motivations or morality of those practices.

The virtue of compassion in compassionate conservation

The role of ethics is becoming an increasingly important feature of biodiversity conservation dialogue and practice. Compassionate conservationists argue for a prohibition of, or at least a strong presumption against, the adoption of conservation policies that intentionally harm animals. They assert that to be compassionate is to care about animals and that it is antithetical to caring for animals to intentionally harm them. Compassionate conservationists thus criticize many existing conservation practices and policies. Two things together challenge the philosophical foundation of compassionate conservation. First, compassionate conservationists ground their theory in virtue ethics, yet virtue ethics permits exceptions to moral rules, so there cannot be an in-principle prohibition on adopting intentional harm-inducing policies and practices. But not all compassionate conservationists advocate for a prohibition on intentionally harming animals, only a strong presumption against it. This leads to the second point: compassion can motivate a person to adopt a harm-inducing conservation policy or practice when doing so is the best available option in a situation in which animals will be harmed no matter what policy or practice is adopted. Combining these insights with the empirical observation that conservationists regularly find themselves in tragic situations, we arrive at the conclusion that conservationists may regularly advocate for harm-inducing policies and practices from a position of compassion. Article Impact Statement: Compassionate conservationists should accept that the virtuously compassionate person may adopt harm-causing conservation policies.

A critical review of the compassionate conservation debate

Compassionate conservation holds that compassion should transform conservation. It has prompted heated debate and has been criticized strongly. We reviewed the debate to characterize compassionate conservation and to philosophically analyze critiques that are recurring and that warrant further critical attention. The necessary elements of compassionate conservation relate to the moral value of sentient animals and conservation and to science and conservation practice. Although compassionate conservation has several nontraditional necessary conditions, it also importantly allows a degree of pluralism in values and scientific judgment regarding animals and conservation practice. We identified 52 specific criticisms from 11 articles that directly critique compassionate conservation. We closely examined 33 of these because they recurred regularly or included substantial questions that required further response. Critics criticized compassionate conservation's ethical foundations, scientific credentials, clarity of application, understanding of compassion, its alleged threat to conservation and biodiversity. Some criticisms, we found, are question begging, confused, or overlook conceptual complexity. These criticisms raise questions for critics and proponents, regarding, for example, equal versus differential intrinsic moral value of different sentient animals (including humans), problems of natural and human-caused suffering of wild animals and predation, and the acceptability of specific conservation practices within compassionate conservation. By addressing recurring and faulty critiques of compassionate conservation and identifying issues for compassionate conservation to address, this review provides a clearer basis for crucial ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue about ethics, values, and conservation.

Quantifying trade-offs between ecological gains, economic costs, and landowners' preferences in boreal mire protection

Private land often encompasses biodiversity features of high conservation value, but its protection is not straightforward. Commonly, landowners' perspectives are rightfully allowed to influence conservation actions. This unlikely comes without consequences on biodiversity or other aspects such as economic considerations, but these consequences are rarely quantitatively considered in decision-making. In the context of boreal mire protection in Finland, we report how acknowledging landowners' resistance to protection changes the combination of mires selected to conservation compared to ignoring landowners' opinions. Using spatial prioritization, we quantify trade-offs arising between the amount of landowners' resistance, protected biodiversity, and financial costs in different conservation scenarios. Results show that the trade-offs cannot be fully avoided. Nevertheless, we show that the systematic examination of the trade-offs opens up options to alleviate them. This can promote the evaluation of different conservation policy outcomes, enabling better-informed conservation decisions and more effective and socially sustainable allocation of conservation resources.

Emotion as a source of moral understanding in conservation

Recent debates around the meaning and implications of compassionate conservation suggest that some conservationists consider emotion a false and misleading basis for moral judgment and decision making. We trace these beliefs to a long-standing, gendered sociocultural convention and argue that the disparagement of emotion as a source of moral understanding is both empirically and morally problematic. According to the current scientific and philosophical understanding, reason and emotion are better understood as partners, rather than opposites. Nonetheless, the two have historically been seen as separate, with reason elevated in association with masculinity and emotion (especially nurturing emotion) dismissed or delegitimated in association with femininity. These associations can be situated in a broader, dualistic, and hierarchical logic used to maintain power for a dominant male (White, able-bodied, upper class, heterosexual) human class. We argue that emotion should be affirmed by conservationists for the novel and essential insights it contributes to conservation ethics. We consider the specific example of compassion and characterize it as an emotional experience of interdependence and shared vulnerability. This experience highlights conservationists' responsibilities to individual beings, enhancing established and widely accepted beliefs that conservationists have a duty to protect populations, species, and ecosystems (or biodiversity). We argue compassion, thus understood, should be embraced as a core virtue of conservation.

Conservation lessons from taboos and trolley problems

Governments pass conservation laws, adopt policies, and make plans yet frequently fail to implement them. Implementation of conservation, however, often requires costly sacrifice: people foregoing benefit for the benefit of biodiversity. Decisions involve trade-offs with outcomes that depend on the values at stake and people's perceptions of those values. Psychology, ethics, and behavioral science have each addressed the challenge of making difficult, often tragic, trade-off decisions. Based on these literatures, values can be classified as secular or sacred, where sacred values are those for which compensation may be unthinkable (e.g., freedom). Taboo trade-offs emerge when secular values are pitted against sacred ones. These are difficult to discuss, much less negotiate. Confronting taboo trade-offs in conservation may require discursive approaches to better understand particular attributes of decisions that place sacred human values at risk. Tragic trade-offs emerge when sacred values are pitted against one another. The trolley problem-a forced choice between 2 unthinkable outcomes-is a simple heuristic illustrating ethical challenges of tragic trade-offs. Behavior studies illustrate that people have a strong aversion to losses where an active choice was made, resulting in a bias toward status quo decisions. Faced with tragic, trolley-problem-like choices, people tend to avoid taking responsibility for action, defer decisions, evade opinions on painful choices, and regret unfortunate outcomes of actions. To help close the implementation gap, conservation actors may need to directly address the psychological, ethical, and behavioral barriers created by the remorse, regret, and moral residue of implementing conservation choices that have tragic outcomes. Recognition of these predictable features of the human psyche may foster better administrative structures to support action with durable outcomes as well as new research directions.

Recognizing animal personhood in compassionate conservation

Compassionate conservation is based on the ethical position that actions taken to protect biodiversity should be guided by compassion for all sentient beings. Critics argue that there are 3 core reasons harming animals is acceptable in conservation programs: the primary purpose of conservation is biodiversity protection; conservation is already compassionate to animals; and conservation should prioritize compassion to humans. We used argument analysis to clarify the values and logics underlying the debate around compassionate conservation. We found that objections to compassionate conservation are expressions of human exceptionalism, the view that humans are of a categorically separate and higher moral status than all other species. In contrast, compassionate conservationists believe that conservation should expand its moral community by recognizing all sentient beings as persons. Personhood, in an ethical sense, implies the individual is owed respect and should not be treated merely as a means to other ends. On scientific and ethical grounds, there are good reasons to extend personhood to sentient animals, particularly in conservation. The moral exclusion or subordination of members of other species legitimates the ongoing manipulation and exploitation of the living worlds, the very reason conservation was needed in the first place. Embracing compassion can help dismantle human exceptionalism, recognize nonhuman personhood, and navigate a more expansive moral space.

Reconsidering humaneness

Animal welfare is increasingly important in the understanding of how human activity affects wildlife, but the conservation community is still grappling with meaningful terminology when communicating this aspect of their work. One example is the use of the terms "humane" and "inhumane." These terms are used in scientific contexts, but they also have legal and social definitions. Without reference to a defined technical standard, describing an action or outcome as humane (or inhumane) constrains science communication because the terms have variable definitions; establish a binary (something is either humane or inhumane); and imply underlying values reflecting a moral prescription. Invoking the term "humane," and especially the strong antithesis "inhumane," can infer a normative judgment of how animals ought to be treated (humane) or ought not to be treated (inhumane). The consequences of applying this terminology are not just academic. Publicizing certain practices as humane can create blurred lines around contentious animal welfare questions and, perhaps intentionally, defer scrutiny of actual welfare outcomes. Labeling other practices as inhumane can be used cynically to erode their public support. We suggest that, if this normative language is used in science, it should always be accompanied by a clear, contextual definition of what is meant by humane.