Wildlife Ethics A systematic account of the ethical issues related to wildlife management and conservation Wildlife Ethics is the first systematic, book-length discussion of the ethics of wildlife conservation and management, and examines the key ethical questions and controversies. Tackling both theory and practice, the text is divided into two parts. The first describes key concepts, ethical theories, and management models relating to wildlife; the second puts these concepts, theories, and models to work, illustrating their (...) significance through detailed case studies on controversies in wildlife management and conservation. The book explores pressing topics including human responsibilities due to climate change, tradeoffs when managing zoonotic disease risks, the ethics of the wildlife trade, culling non-native species, indigenous wildlife use, and zoo-based conservation programs. Readers are encouraged to explore different ways of valuing wild animals and their practical implications. This essential text: Explains and explores relationships between valuing biodiversity, human utility, ecosystems, species, and animal welfare Describes established approaches to wildlife management, such as sustainable use, and emerging concepts, such as compassionate conservation Discusses key ethical theories, including utilitarianism, ecocentrism, and animal rights Offers a practical model of how to analyze ethical issues in wildlife management and conservation Wildlife Ethics: The Ethics of Wildlife Management and Conservation is an accessible introduction to complex ethical issues, making the book an important resource for students in fields such as conservation biology, ecology, environmental science and policy, game management, public health and veterinary medicine. It will also be an invaluable tool for wildlife managers, conservationists, One Health practitioners, practicing veterinarians and animal rehabilitation staff, contemporary wildlife professionals and other stakeholders. (shrink)

The activity of wildlife viewing rests on an underlying contradiction. Wild animals are generally human-averse; they avoid humans and respond to human encounters by fleeing and retreating to cover. One would therefore expect human viewing of wild animals to be at best unpredictable, intermittent, and fleeting. Yet in recent decades, wildlife viewing has become a major recreational activity for millions of people around the world and has emerged as a thriving commercial industry. How can these two things—widespread (...) class='Hi'>wildlife intolerance of humans and large-scale human observation of wildlife—be squared? The answer is that wild animals are only viewed on this scale because they have been made viewable through human intervention. This article examines two kinds of intervention—habituation and attraction—that change wildlife behavior toward humans and render hitherto elusive animals susceptible to regular, proximate, and protracted human viewing. (shrink)

This article calls for an end to the use of the term ‘invasive species’, both in the scientific and public discourse on wildlife conservation. There are two broad reasons for this: the first problem with the invasive species narrative is that this demonisation of ‘invasives’ is morally wrong, particularly because it usually results in the unjust killing of the animals in question. Following on from this, the second problem is that the narrative is also incoherent, both from scientific and (...) philosophical perspectives. At the heart of both of these issues is the problem that the invasive species narrative oversimplifies what are in fact very complex biological processes. As a result, the policies carried out with the stated aim of ‘controlling’ these animals are often unethical. In light of the current global species decline, this article asserts that the way we think and talk about these animals should be changed and the term ‘invasive species’ should be discontinued, in the hope that this leads to changes in practice. (shrink)

Urban animals can benefit from living in cities, but this also makes them vulnerable as they increasingly depend on the advantages of urban life. This article has two aims. First, I provide a detailed analysis of the concept of captivity and explain why it matters to nonhuman animals—because and insofar as many of them have a (non-substitutable) interest in freedom. Second, I defend a surprising implication of the account—pushing the boundaries of the concept while the boundaries of cities and human (...) activities expand. I argue for the existence of the neglected problem of pervasive captivity, of which urban wildlife is an illustration. Many urban animals are confined, controlled and dependent, therefore often captive of expanding urban areas. While I argue that captivity per se is value-neutral, I draw the ethical and policy implications of harmful pervasive captivity. (shrink)

An often overlooked impact of urbanisation is a reduction in our ability to connect with nature in our daily lives. If people lose the ability to connect with nature we run the risk of creating a n...

It is widely believed that there must be a conflict between food production and conservation, and that development must be related to economics. Both these beliefs are questioned. It is suggested that ecological agriculture, which includes ethologically and ecologically sound animal management can reduce conflicts between conservation and food production. African elephants are taken as an example illustrating different attitudes to conservation. It is proposed that, rather than developing further the present common conservation attitude of ' wildlife apartheid', the (...) future of elephants in many parts of Africa may rest on bringing them closer to the voters where the welfare of neither the human nor elephant is compromised. Here, they can act as both as workers, and as ' wildlife ambassadors'. This approach needs further research and development, but preliminary results show significant possibilities for reducing these apparently conflicting land use interests in some geographical areas. (shrink)

The Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences (FWS) graduate program at Virginia Tech held a student-led, discussion-based, 9-week seminar in the philosophy of science during the fall 1999 semester. This seminar presented the sociologist of science with the opportunity to investigate questions such as, How does a contemporary scientific discipline use the philosophy of science? What do scientists hope to gain from an understanding of demarcation issues? And how do they perceive themselves as a science? Issues of demarcation between (...) science and pseudo-science are prevalent in FWS. The role of public funding is at the forefront of the department’s concerns, as governmental agencies are responsible, to a dominant degree, for funding research that the public assumes will benefit them. Thus, the concerns of the department are of utility, or the perception thereof. An investigation of the sort proposed here is practical yet restrictive. The topics are preselected and noncomprehensive because the seminar organizers in FWS chose select readings pertinent to their discipline. Discussions revolved around such topics as the definition of science, methodology, credibility, specialization within FWS, the value (or lack thereof) of theory in FWS, the manager-scientist distinction, and the use of models. The intent of this article is to provide a brief ethnographic view of the seminar. It will review some of the seminar topics and relate them to the broader issue of scientific self-definition and the concept of science as a social mechanism. It is not an evaluative article about FWS but a descriptive article about how a scientific discipline regards itself. (shrink)

This collection of qualitative case studies demonstrates how social groups create opposing symbolic meanings of Nature during conflict over wildlife issues. It highlights the untapped utility of constructionist approaches for understanding how different meanings can ultimately affect wildlife and people.

This lavishly illustrated book highlights the conservation importance of congregatory animals species--those which gather in vast groups. It also focuses on the irreplaceability of the congregation sites which are able to support such large gatherings of animals, fish, or birds.

Global human population expansion is rooted in a remarkably successful evolutionary innovation. The neolithic transformation of the natural world gave rise to a symbiosis between humans and their domesticated plant and animal partners that will expand from a current 20 per cent to 60 percent of terrestrial biomass by the middle of the coming century. Such an increase must necessarily be accompanied by a concomitant decrease in wildlife biomass. We suggest that current trends in population growth are unlikely to (...) abate for three reasons: first, there are intrinsic biological pressures to reproduce regardless of social engineering; second, the character of the domestic alliance makes it a formidable competitor to wildlife; and third, the timeframe before population doubling is, from a biological perspective, virtually instantaneous. This paper draws from a wide body of research in the biological and social sciences. We neither condone nor endorse this picture of inexorable population increase. Rather, we appeal for a change in the nature of the discussion of population among environmentalists, to focus on the question of how best to manage what wildlife will be left on the margins of a domesticated world. (shrink)

City-scale urban greening is expanding wildlife habitat in previously less hospitable urban areas. Does this transformation also prompt a reckoning with the longstanding idea that cities are places intended to satisfy primarily human needs? I pose this question in the context of one of North America's most ambitious green infrastructure programmes to manage urban runoff: Philadelphia's Green City, Clean Waters. Given that the city's green infrastructure plans have little to say about wildlife, I investigate how wild animals fit (...) into urban greening professionals' conceptions of the urban. I argue that practitioners relate to urban wildlife via three distinctive frames: 1) animal control, 2) public health and 3) biodiversity, and explore the implications of each for peaceful human-wildlife coexistence in 'greened' cities. (shrink)

With the increased use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in wildlife conservation, issues around whether AI-based monitoring tools in wildlife conservation comply with standards regarding AI Ethics are on the rise. This review aims to summarise current debates and identify gaps as well as suggest future research by investigating (1) current AI Ethics and AI Ethics issues in wildlife conservation, (2) Initiatives Stakeholders in AI for wildlife conservation should consider integrating AI Ethics in wildlife conservation. We (...) find that the existing literature weakly focuses on AI Ethics and AI Ethics in wildlife conservation while at the same time ignores AI Ethics integration in AI systems for wildlife conservation. This paper formulates an ethically aligned AI system framework and discusses pre-eminent on-demand AI systems in wildlife conservation. The proposed framework uses agile software life cycle methodology to implement guidelines towards the ethical upgrade of any existing AI system or the development of any new ethically aligned AI system. The guidelines enforce, among others, the minimisation of intentional harm and bias, diversity in data collection, design compliance, auditing of all activities in the framework and ease of code inspection. This framework will inform AI developers, users, conservationists, and policymakers on what to consider when integrating AI Ethics into AI-based systems for wildlife conservation. (shrink)

Biodiversity and Conservation 4: 916-928.

The theoretical biology of Jakob von Uexküll has had significant conceptual and practical afterlives, in Continental philosophy, biosemiotics and elsewhere. This paper will examine the utilisation of Uexküll in twentieth-century zoo biology and its significance for relating to wildlife in hybrid environments. There is an important though rarely analysed line of inheritance from von Uexküll to Heini Hediger, the Swiss zoo director and animal psychologist. Hediger’s fundamental theoretical position began from the construction of the world from the animal’s point (...) of view, as determined by factors including species specific phylogeny, individual and group biography, and anthropogenic circumstance. He operationalised Uexküll’s approach to animal worlds in order to optimise the design of zoo enclosures, considered as both physical and psychological habitats, in which captive wildlife could flourish. This subjectivist and phenomenological perspective has often been sidelined in zoo biology by more objectivist and mechanising approaches. Nonetheless, Hediger’s work and thought, through its inheritance from Uexküll, has important implications for twenty-first century relations with wildlife. (shrink)

This paper argues that there may be instances where assessing wildlife for monetary valuation might be quite reasonable and useful for public policy, even when there are strong arguments against valuation of wildlife and nature. A case of deer population management is considered where continued growth of the deer population will lead to more property damage and habitat loss. However, deer population control raises ethical questions on the rights of animals to exist and on the rights of humans (...) to arbitrarily interfere. The contingent valuation methodology is used to value preferences for deer management for the purpose of guiding public policy. The valuation estimates show that ethical concerns about killing deer affect the level of willingness to pay in a quite a logical manner. However, for individuals with rights-based preferences, CVM is not appropriate. The survey results also show that individuals with rights-based preferences are a small minority in this particular example. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dominion over Wildlife? An Environmental Theology of Human–Wildlife Relations by Stephen M. VantasselColeman FanninDominion over Wildlife? An Environmental Theology of Human–Wildlife Relations Stephen M. Vantassel Eugene, OR: Resource, 2009. 232pp. $26.00In Dominion over Wildlife?, Stephen Vantassel, a scholar with professional experience in animal damage control, provides a substantive examination of the neglected subject of human–wildlife relations. For this, he is to be (...) commended. Although ultimately disappointing, his argument indicates that much work remains to be done in this area.Vantassel’s subtitle is somewhat misleading since he devotes the bulk of the book to a polemic against a small group he terms “Christian Animal Rights (CAR) activists”—especially Anglican theologian Andrew Linzey and his followers—who question the idea that God grants humans dominion over creation (“Dominionism”), including the moral right to manage, kill, and eat animals. “The critical question... is whether CAR activists are correct in their belief that Scripture exhorts us to adopt a vegetarian and non-violent stance toward animals” (14). Vantassel’s response is more exegetical than theological, and in the mode of conservative evangelical apologetics, he devotes chapters to refuting CAR activists’ appeals to the Old Testament (specifically the covenant of Creation, the narratives of the Fall and Noah, the sacrificial system, and passages that support humane treatment of animals); the New Testament (Christ’s concern for animals, a Christus Victor view of the atonement, and an Edenic eschatology); ethics (compassion, restraint, and stewardship); and science (a case study of whether trapping is unnecessarily cruel and environmentally irresponsible). Only in the final chapter does he propose his model of “Shepherdism,” which “avoids the negative stereotypes held against Dominionism, while upholding God’s decree that humans maintain their superintendence over animals” (160). Shepherdism centers on the principles that creation is “God’s property,” that humans are charged with being its caretakers, and that Christ is a model for behavior toward it. Vantassel insists that humans should treat wildlife humanely and not exterminate species.For Vantassel, theology is a matter of individuals—largely apart from church or tradition—reading an inerrant Bible to discern God’s commands. Likewise, ethics is a matter of individuals using reason to construct arguments that “stand on their own merits” and “may still be sufficient to persuade, if not compel, Christian behavior even if Scripture does not mandate the behavior” (99). This [End Page 193] is not the forum for criticizing these approaches, but they not only distance Vantassel’s argument from scholarship in the field—which he does not engage—but also make it unlikely that it will persuade those who do not read the Bible or view God in the same way. To note two examples, on the basis of Amos 4, he contends that “some environmental problems are caused not through our direct abuse of the land but through our disobedience, which God then punishes through sending environmental catastrophes” (165n13), and on the basis of Christ’s acceptance of fishing with nets (Luke 5:4), he contends that “Christians are permitted to not only eat animals, they may employ means to capture them that will cause pain and injury” (171). Indeed, as a lifelong hunter who shares Vantassel’s basic position, I found myself more sympathetic to the CAR activists’ arguments toward which he is frequently uncharitable; he associates them with Darwinism and feminist and liberation theologies, labels their hermeneutics “modernistic” for stressing narrative, and variously calls their ideas “absurd,” “incredulous,” and “strange.”Vantassel discusses a number of helpful statistics and studies, and he rightly points out the problems posed by factory farming, the disproportionate effects of environmental degradation on the poor, and the practical difficulties of vegetarianism. However, his preoccupation with exegesis means that he underemphasizes these issues and overlooks others, including hunting becoming a trophy-obsessed, technology-dominated “sport.” Hopefully he and other scholars will produce more on this subject in the near future.Coleman FanninBaylor UniversityCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In recent decades conservation biology has achieved a high position among the sciences. This is certainly true of South Africa, a small country, but the third most biodiverse in the world. This article traces some aspects of the transformation of South African wildlife management during the 1930s to the 1960s from game reserves based on custodianship and the "balance of nature" into scientifically managed national parks with a philosophy of "command and control" or "management by intervention." In 1910 the (...) four British colonies had formed the Union of South Africa, and by the 1920s there was wide acceptance of national parks, a development influenced by their success in the United States. It was not, however, until after the Second World War, that management of the expanding conservation estate altered from a rather unsystematic laissez faire variety, into more scientifically informed management practices with an efficient bureaucracy in charge. This was achieved by modifications in organizational structures and institutional cultures initiated by a change of government in 1948 which, this article argues, impacted in turn on wildlife management and shaped and professionalized many aspects of that field science. "Management by intervention" was the hallmark of South African wildlife and conservation biology from the 1960s until recently, when there have been shifts towards "adaptive resource management" in a period of further change in the country's politics. (shrink)

The history of ideas normally invoked by animal liberationists and their opponents cannot account for our basic wildlife protection attitudes, which actually developed out of the worldwide species?classification project begun by Linnaeus in the eighteenth century. These attitudes, formed in terms of a pre?evolutionary and pre?ecological belief in fixed and immutable species, were weakened to some degree by the rise of evolutionary theory and ecological science, since evolution provides a mechanism for the replacement of extinct species and depicts extinction (...) as natural, and ecology teaches that ecosystems naturally adjust when species are lost. Wildlife protection attitudes are preservationist in so far as they are concerned with the preservation of species and conservationist in so far as they are concerned with the lives of individual animals and populations. From all perspectives except that of animal liberation, wild animals are predominantly viewed in terms of instrumental value: as a means to the continuation of species, the maintenance of healthy ecosystems, and for various other anthropocentric purposes. These various perspectives fit together within an aesthetic conception of wildlife which is strongly Platonic. From an aesthetic standpoint, wild animals, as exemplications of various species, are more analogous to mass?produced toys, admired for their design or structure, than the natural equivalent of original works of art admired for their own sakes. (shrink)

Within US media reactions to March of the penguins, animal images became an arena for displaced conflicts of human interest. This paper examines an intermediary step through which the film became a medium for social disagreement: conflict over control of the cultural authority to interpret animal images. I analyze claims to the cultural honorific of science made within disputes over readings of the film as evidence for intelligent design . I argue that published refutations of this reading were largely misguided (...) in that they tended to group arguments-for-ID with a suite of social–allegorical readings of the film. By failing to address essential differences between interpretations, critics of the arguments-for-ID necessarily overlooked their problematic and unexamined claim that the film shares the cultural authority of science. Furthermore, where critics of the ID readings might have challenged this claim, they often replicated it instead. This overarching failure critically to assess the status of the film’s scientific authority may have resulted from audience expectations about the genre of wildlife films, the advertising strategy of the film’s US distributors, and structural ambiguities within the film concerning its status as a scientific representation. (shrink)

China's environmental problems are well known, but recently its record in the area of wildlife conservation, particularly with regard to endangered species, has come under scrutiny. Environmental values colour how we in the West view both China's past experience with wildlife and what strategies it should adopt to foster better conservation. Chinese have long taken a utilitarian view of wildlife, valuing species primarily as resources for man's use and only secondarily for other reasons. However, China has not (...) developed institutions capable of sustaining the desired use of wildlife in the face of ever-growing demands. I suggest that Western criticisms of Chinese utilitarian attitudes are inappropriate, ineffective, and possibly counter-productive: deep-seated cultural mores change slowly. Instead, Westerners concerned with the fate of China's wildlife should assist the development of systems that act to channel demand for wildlife 's material benefits toward investment in conservation. Such systems will likely require devolution of considerable control to local levels, strengthening incentives to favour long-over short-term benefits, and – notwithstanding common Western attitudes – substantial consumptive use of wildlife. (shrink)

As an environmental philosopher I had long been aware of dilemmas between animal ethics and ecological ethics, but now, as the manager of my own biodiversity reserve, I was facing these dilemmas in a more gut-wrenching and complex form than I had ever encountered in the classroom. Pressured by environmental authorities to cull kangaroos on my property, in the name of ecological ethics, I started thinking about the very meaning of ethics, its origins in the evolution of society and its (...) material and metaphysical presuppositions. Two different conceptions of the normative root of society emerged, the deontic conception, appropriate within the material and metaphysical framework of hunter-gatherer societies, and the axial conception, appropriate within the framework of ’civilization’, viz the agrarian societies that evolved into the urban-industrial formations of the modern era. The axial conception, based on empathy, aligned with our modern conception of ethics, and underlay our contemporary sense of animal ethics. ’Ecological ethics’, on the other hand, seemed to be obscurely underpinned by the deontic conception, and was not ethical at all in the axial sense, and was moreover mismatched, normatively speaking, with the material and metaphysical realities of modern societies. A different set of practices from those currently prescribed by environmental authorities needs to be devised to meet both the ethical and ecological requirements of our contemporary natural environment. (shrink)

How the emergence of wildlife photography changed the way we think about animals.

ArgumentI argue through an analysis of spectacle that the relationship between wildlife documentary films’ entertainment and educational mandates is complex and co-constitutive. Accuracy-based criticism of wildlife films reveals assumptions of a deficit model of science communication and positions spectacle as an external commercial pressure influencing the genre. Using thePlanet Earth series as a case study, I describe spectacle's prominence within the recent blue-chip renaissance in wildlife film, resulting from technological innovations and twenty-first-century consumer and broadcast market contexts. (...) I connect spectacle in contemporary wildlife films to its relevant precursors within natural history, situating spectacle as a central feature of natural history display designed to inspire awe and wonder in audiences. I show that contemporary documentary spectacle is best understood as an opportunity for affective knowing rather than a constraint on accuracy; as a result, spectacle contributes to the virtuous inter-reinforcement of entertainment and education at work in blue-chip wildlife films. (shrink)

Human-wildlife interactions frequently lead to conflicts – about the fair use of natural resources, for example. Various principled accounts have been proposed to resolve such interspecies conflicts. However, the existing frameworks are often inadequate to the complexities of real-life scenarios. In particular, they frequently fail because they do not adequately take account of the qualitative importance of individual interests, their relative importance, and the number of individuals affected. This article presents a limited aggregation account designed to overcome these shortcomings (...) and thus to facilitate decision-making in real-world human-wildlife conflicts. (shrink)

In recent decades conservation biology has achieved a high position among the sciences. This is certainly true of South Africa, a small country, but the third most biodiverse in the world. This article traces some aspects of the transformation of South African wildlife management during the 1930s to the 1960s from game reserves based on custodianship and the "balance of nature" into scientifically managed national parks with a philosophy of "command and control" or "management by intervention." In 1910 the (...) four British colonies had formed the Union of South Africa, and by the 1920s there was wide acceptance of national parks, a development influenced by their success in the United States. It was not, however, until after the Second World War, that management of the expanding conservation estate altered from a rather unsystematic laissez faire variety, into more scientifically informed management practices with an efficient bureaucracy in charge. This was achieved by modifications in organizational structures and institutional cultures initiated by a change of government in 1948 which, this article argues, impacted in turn on wildlife management and shaped and professionalized many aspects of that field science. "Management by intervention" was the hallmark of South African wildlife and conservation biology from the 1960s until recently, when there have been shifts towards "adaptive resource management" in a period of further change in the country's politics. (shrink)

Ethics on the Ark presents a passionate, multivocal discussion—among zoo professionals, activists, conservation biologists, and philosophers—about the future of zoos and aquariums, the treatment of animals in captivity, and the question of whether the individual, the species, or the ecosystem is the most important focus in conservation efforts. Contributors represent all sides of the issues. Moving from the fundamental to the practical, from biodiversity to population regulation, from animal research to captive breeding, Ethics on the Ark represents an important gathering (...) of the many fervent and contentious viewpoints shaping the wildlife conservation debate. (shrink)

Many experts have warned that environmental degradation is increasing the likelihood of future pandemics like COVID-19, as habitat loss and poaching increase close contact between wildlife and people. This fact has been framed as a reason to increase wildlife conservation efforts. We have many good reasons to step up conservation efforts, but arguments for doing so on the basis of pandemic prevention are rhetorically, ethically, and empricially flawed.

This study provides a descriptive account of rationalizations for poaching used by wildlife law violators. There has been little research on motivations for poaching. This study uses qualitative data obtained from surveys and in-depth interviews with wildlife law violators and conservation officers in Kentucky to examine rationalizations used by wildlife law violators to excuse and justify participation in this type of illegal activity. Comments from conservation officers and violators revealed widespread use of rationalizations, with denial of responsibility (...) being most common. The study also used claims of entitlement, defense of necessity, and denial of necessity of the law. Findings contribute to our knowledge of why people illegally take wildlife resources. (shrink)

Human–wildlife coexistence is critical for sustainable and healthy ecosystems as well as to prevent human and wildlife suffering. In this paper, an intersubjective approach to human–wildlife interactions is proposed as a lens toward human decentering and emergent mutual evolution. The thesis is developed through a secondary data analysis of a research study on wildlife care and philosophical analysis using the work of Bernard Lonergan and Edmund Husserl. The study was conducted using the theory of transcendent pluralism, (...) which is grounded in human and ecological dignity, including the dignity of beyond‐human beings. Deeper interpretation of the original data suggests that human–wildlife interactions are mutually conscious, embodied, and hold spatial–temporal dimensions. The affective realm is an integral dimension of human–wildlife intersubjectivity. These findings inform an approach toward human–wildlife relations in which human persons and the beyond‐human multitude can all flourish in dignity. (shrink)

Given that one-million species are currently threatened with extinction and that humans are undermining the entire natural infrastructure on which our modern world depends (IPBES, 2019), this dissertation will show that there is a need to provide an alternative approach to wildlife conservation, one that avoids anthropocentrism and wildlife valuation on an instrumental basis to provide meaningful and tangible success for both wildlife conservation and human well-being in an inclusive way. In this sense, The Value of Being (...) Wild will showcase the concept of eco-phenomenology as an important non-anthropocentric alternative to the current approach to wildlife conservation, namely sustainable development. The problem with this dominant paradigm, as Chapter Two will reveal, is that sustainable development has not only failed to provide humans and future generations of humans with their own needs but, as per the latest IPBES report, failed in arresting the freefall decline of wild species. The situation currently requires a radical overhaul of the current system. As emerged from the later work of French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), eco-phenomenology is particularly well-suited as a practical alternative to sustainable development. The core reason is that eco-phenomenology moves away from a human-centred framework toward a far more inclusive approach that embraces the conservation of wild animals as well the wild environment they dwell in, beyond any human needs (although humans are embraced within the approach too). Merleau-Ponty helps us to move away from anthropocentrism to a more inclusive approach in conserving wildlife, since his phenomenology does not consider the human animal’s relationship in the world as exclusive (to use and exploit wild animals solely for their benefit), but inclusive (as an interconnected biological component in a broad ecological system). The strength of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of phenomenology is that it facilitates an understanding of all living and even non-living entities, such as air, water and soil, as interconnected and interrelated within a broad biosphere. While Merleau-Ponty did not address the concept of wild animals or the biosphere directly, his later work points to the fact that human animals cannot exist outside a world that provides life-giving force to all living beings. Phenomenology, as developed by Merleau-Ponty, is a concept that recognises the axiological qualities of the natural world are inherent and ineliminable from the discipline of traditional phenomenology, hence the term ‘eco-phenomenology’, developed in one reception of his thinking. Eco-phenomenology offers a return to a world that humans have tried hard to alienate themselves from, in that it approaches the natural environment and wild animals, not as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather as they are experienced and lived from within by the attentive animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Pontian eco-phenomenology thus emphasises a holistic dialogue within a more-than-human world (Abram, 1996: 65). Eco-phenomenology is a concept that points toward an applied strategy but so far this has not been attempted in earnest. This is specifically true when it comes to wildlife conservation. The Value of Being Wild, therefore, sets out to employ the concept of eco-phenomenology in order to provide a new practical wildlife conservation approach that challenges, and potentially replaces, the current prevailing policies as employed by global governmental and inter-governmental agencies. In particular, this alternative frame is posed as a replacement for the failing anthropocentric conservation practices currently in place in South Africa. This dissertation will therefore conclude by exploring strategies where conservation of wildlife is not taken as instrumentally-valued, or even intrinsically-valued, but rather as wild-valued in that the existence of wild animals as wild is conserved within a broader, more inclusive overall ecology that supports the survival and flourishing of all living beings that include plants, wild animals and human beings. (shrink)

Wildlife conservation aims to protect the natural world, plant and animal species, and the habitats they form part of and rely on for survival. More particularly, it focuses on species that are considered important, be it from economic, ecological and other perspectives, and preventing harm to these species. While conservation activities, based on common conservation values such as species fitness and biodiversity, are no doubt beneficial to animals in general, there seems to be a fundamental disjoint between this approach (...) and the mainstay of current ethical theories regarding animals, which focus on the treatment and welfare of individual entities. I will argue that the conflict between wildlife conservation and animal ethics arises both in the aims, as well as the application of conservation. In its aims, the focus on species as a whole often comes at a cost to individual animals, and in its application individual animals are often harmed as well. To demonstrate these two points, I will use the case study of the cloning and reintroduction of the currently extinct northern white rhino. I will then conclude that wildlife conservation, while aiming to benefit animals, is fundamentally at odds with any animal ethic that considers individual wellbeing as central. (shrink)

This article analyzes how a number of writers in English articulated their attitudes toward southern Africa's indigenous mammal megafauna from c.1840 to just before the First World War. In changing contexts of declining wild animal numbers, it examines how attitudes and the expression of those attitudes—together with developments in biology—altered with the modernization of government and the economy. To some extent, it also explores the human and other values placed on certain species of animals, including ideas about extinction, notions of (...) what constitutes "vermin," and evolving opinions on nature and environmental conservation. Some of the concerns discussed here include lines of thinking that continue, albeit much altered, into our own time. (shrink)

The study of the interrelationship between ethnomedicinal knowledge and socio-cultural values needs to be studied mainly for the simple reason that culture is not only the ethical imperative for development, it is also the condition of its sustainability; for their exists a symbiotic relationship between habitats and cultures. The traditional communities around Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary of Uttarakhand state in India have a rich local health care tradition, which has been in practice for the past hundreds of years. The present (...) study documents the Ethnomedicinal uses of 54 medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) along with their botanical and vernacular names, family, habit, habitat, threat status, collection season, purpose of collection, quantity, conservation practices, market potential and part(s) used in traditional health care system. The documented species belonging to 38 families have been used to cure more than 47 different kinds of ailments. These MAPs collected from the wild in a particular season and used as per the method prescribed by traditional herbal healers (Vaidyas) that provide effective results. Perception of local people during field trips based on socio-demographic characters showed them to prefer herbal system of treatments and they understood the status of traditional health care systems in the region. The study reveals that approximately 70 % population of the study area depend on herbal systems of treatments and preferred to visit Vaidyas for curing a variety of ailments because the traditional system of medicine is one of the most important prevailing systems in the region where modern health care facilities are rare or in very poor conditions. The organic cultivation practices of selected MAPs were demonstrated to rural inhabitants through capacity building training program and participatory action research framework approaches for sustainability and enhancement of livelihood security. A series of workshops and village level meetings on traditional health care systems were organized and forming/registered a strong association of Vaidyas for making their traditional system of health care more practical and effective. The study emphasizes the potentials of the ethnomedicinal research, conservation practices, socio-cultural and religious ethics for promoting traditional plants based treatments and also the need to document the indigenous knowledge for scientific validation before its industrial application. (shrink)

Should you help a wild rabbit fleeing a wall of flame? What is our responsibility to wildlife affected by wildfire? This paper focuses on two cases of ad hoc public aid to wildlife that occurred during California's 2017 'Thomas Fire' and were subsequently popularised online. We take the discourse surrounding these cases - specifically, a viral video of a man removing a wild rabbit from the fire's flames and the widespread call to leave out buckets of water for (...) displaced animals - as an invitation to engage in broader ethical and theoretical discussion about our individual relationships to wild animals during the age of ecological crisis termed the Anthropocene. Through this case analysis, we identify emerging tensions between what we call 'interventionist' and 'anti-interventionist' positions and assert that, while anti-interventionist positions are generally framed in rational, empirical or technocratic terms, a full consideration of already-existing human entanglements with the natural world troubles this frame. We conclude that the Anthropocene presents unique circumstances that give substantial support to the interventionist position; at the same time, we continue to uphold the value of key critiques present in the anti-interventionist argument, which might yet help to shape the most effective form of human aid to wild animals and alleviate problems of ecological sustainability, more broadly. (shrink)

Identifying what is wrong with the demise of wildlife requires prior identification of the human sentiment which is offended by that demise. Attempts to understand this in terms of animal rights (individual or species) and the benefits of wildlife to human beings or the wider environment are rejected. A diagnosis of this sentiment is attempted in terms of our increasing admiration, in the conditions of modernity and postmodernity, for the 'harmony' or 'at homeness' of wild animals with their (...) environments. The diagnosis is defended against certain misunderstandings, and implications are tentatively drawn from it for environmental education and the management of wildlife. (shrink)