Red in Tooth and Claw No More: Animal Rights and the Permissibility to Redesign Nature Connor K. Kianpour Georgia State University ckianpour1@gsu.edu Eze Paez University of Minho joseezequiel.paez@upf.edu Abstract: Most nonhuman animals live in the wild and it is probable that suffering predominates in their lives due to natural events. Humans may at some point be able to engage in paradise engineering, or the modification of nature and animal organisms themselves to improve the well-being of wild animals. We may, in other words, make nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ no more. We argue that this creates a tension between environmental ethics and animal ethics which is likely insurmountable. First, concern for the environment can be compatible with helping individual wild animals but should see redesigning nature as morally impermissible. Second, if we are concerned with animal well-being, we may reject that we have a duty to help wild animals even to the point of redesigning nature, but we must nevertheless concede that it is permissible to do so under certain circumstances. We show how this permissibility can be derived from three animal rights views: Tom Regan’s, a novel account inspired by Thomas Pogge and a libertarian approach to animal rights. Keywords: Animal Rights, Environmentalism, Paradise Engineering, Tom Regan, Robert Nozick, Thomas Pogge, Wild Animal Suffering INTRODUCTION Lord Alfred Tennyson once described nature as ‘red in tooth and claw’ (Tennyson 1877: 57). John Stuart Mill, in a similar vein, wrote that ‘nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature’s every day performances’ (Mill [1874] 2005: 28). It is difficult to deny that nature is, to a large extent, a source of harm for the nonhuman animals that inhabit it. If this is true, is it possible to protect the natural environment and, at the same time, the interests of wild animals? Animal advocates, environmental activists and philosophers alike have answered this question in the affirmative (Everett 2001, Jamieson 1998). Still, over the years, others have argued that concern for wild animals stands in tension with concern for the environment (Callicott 1980, Sagoff 1984, Singer 2015: 146–147, Horta 2017a, Faria 2016, Faria & Paez 2019). On many occasions, the interests of wild animals are frustrated by natural events such as predation, starvation and disease. In these cases, it is those natural processes themselves which environmentalism often calls on us to protect that are harmful to animals. Imagine, however, that we could render nature red in tooth and claw no more. It is likely that humans will at some point gain knowledge and develop technology that will make it possible to modify nature on a massive scale. These skills could be used to protect wild animals from the naturogenic harms mentioned above. We might even be able to redesign nature from the bottom up, fashioning an Eden of sorts where wild animals will not have to fear the once-inevitable harms associated with the natural world. Throughout our argument, we will call these kinds of extensive ecological interventions ‘paradise engineering’ (Pearce 2005 [1995]). In this paper, we defend two claims. The first is that, though concern for the environment can be compatible with helping individual wild animals who are suffering from natural harms, it should see redesigning nature, either totally or in part, as morally impermissible (Section 2). The second is that, contrariwise, if we are concerned about animal well-being, we must concede that it is permissible under certain circumstances to help wild animals even to the point of redesigning nature. We defend this claim by showing how such a permissibility can be derived from three animal rights views: Tom Regan’s (Section 3), a novel account inspired by Thomas Pogge (Section 4) and a libertarian approach to animal rights (Section 5). This entails that the different aims of action posited, respectively, by animal ethics and environmental ethics are irreconcilable regarding the crucial problem of naturogenic wild animal suffering (Section 6). When that happens, we must choose which of those aims should be made subordinate to the other. Some other animal rights view may come along and resolve the tension we identify between animal ethics and environmental ethics, but we find this to be unlikely for reasons we outline in our conclusion. CONCERN FOR ANIMALS AND CONCERN FOR THE ENVIRONMENT For the purposes of this discussion, we will understand ‘concern for animals’ or ‘animal ethics’ as the view that sentience is a sufficient criterion of moral considerability and that the interests of individual sentient nonhuman animals therefore have moral significance (Everett 2001). We understand ‘interests’ as Joel Feinberg (1984: 33–34) and Alasdair Cochrane (2009) do: ‘to have an interest in x is to have some kind of stake in x; and to have a stake in x is to stand to gain or lose depending on the condition of x ... That is to say, an individual's life goes better or worse as a result of the state of x’ (Cochrane 2009: 662). Consequentialist and non-consequentialist animal ethics positions may differ with respect to the content of and justification for our normative commitments involving animals. Nevertheless, animal ethicists agree that we have some moral reasons to protect, and perhaps even advance, the interests of animals. We will understand ‘concern for the environment’, ‘environmental ethics’ or ‘environmentalism’ as the view that at least some natural entities and processes have inherent value, and that this value provides us with moral reasons to act in certain ways. Environmental ethicists disagree about which entities are morally considerable. According to biocentric individualists, being alive is a sufficient criterion for possessing moral status. We therefore have reasons to preserve all individual living organisms whether or not they are sentient (Attfield 1983, Schweitzer 1923, Taylor 1981/1986, Varner 1998/2001). Some environmentalists, however, take a holistic rather than an individualistic approach to environmental ethics, hence diverging even further from animal ethics and traditional anthropocentric views. According to these environmentalists, interconnected wholes like ecosystems, species, biodiversity, biocenoses or landscapes are loci of value (Callicott 1989, Johnson 1993, Leopold 1949/2010). On naturocentrism, natural entities and processes in general are bearers of inherent value and must be preserved to the extent that their naturalness has not been eroded by human interference (Katz 1992, Elliot 1997, Hettinger 2019). Despite these differences, there is a common thread among all these positions: preserving these valuable natural entities and processes, whichever they are, is one of our most important moral aims. It is true that different criteria of moral considerability are embraced by environmentalists and animal advocates. Environmentalism, on the one hand, is typically committed to the claim that species, biodiversity and ecosystemic stability are inherently valuable. These considerations give us reasons to prioritise the protection of endangered species or of species that perform important ecological roles like keystone species. On the other hand, someone concerned with the interests of individual sentient beings may claim that the interests of nonhuman animals count roughly equally (Regan 2004 [1985]: 359–364), or that the interests of some matter more because of their actual or modal psychological capacities (Kagan 2019). In any case, the claim that sentient beings matter is entirely compatible with the claim that non-sentient natural entities do as well. If there is any tension between animal ethics and environmental ethics, it does not stem from their different criteria of moral considerability. This is, indeed, one of the assumptions of the movement for compassionate conservation, whose proponents defend that conservationist aims must be pursued in ways that do not harm nonhuman animals. See Bekoff (2010). If such a tension exists, it must stem from the way our ethical priorities are ordered when they conflict with each other. Animal ethics tells us that respecting or promoting the interests of sentient beings (including wild animals) is at least one of our main justifications for action. For its part, environmental ethics claims the same about preserving non-sentient living organisms, biodiversity and certain natural entities and processes. There is, again, no logical error in holding both of these views. Still, a complete ethical position needs additional criteria to determine which of these goals—advancing the interests of animals or preserving nature—ought to be given precedence if and when they conflict. Such an ordering scheme is necessary in cases where one of these aims can only be attained at the expense of the other. Jamieson (1998) argued that animal ethics should be viewed as one kind of environmental ethics: that in which both sentient beings and non-sentient nature are valued inherently. Notice, however, how this way of describing these different views does not dissolve the problem of what to do when it is not possible, at the same time, to advance the interests of sentient beings and preserve non-sentient nature. The normative tension we are concerned about exists, even if on this description it becomes internal to environmentalism. One instance in which the aims of the animal ethicist may conflict with those of the environmentalist is when it is necessary to intervene in nature to help wild animals. Granted, environmentalists do not oppose all forms of intervention in nature. We thank two anonymous referees for encouraging us to clarify this point. The aim of preserving nature gives us reasons to repair previous anthropogenic disruptions of the natural status quo. Indeed ‘the essence’ of conservation biology is to counter the threats of ‘habitat loss or degradation, use, invasive species, human disturbance, pollution, and persecution’ (Hayward et al 2019: 763). To that end, we may be required to intervene in nature in several significant ways, such as with: ‘the creation of protected areas to ameliorate habitat loss and degradation; legislation to stop pollution, overuse, and persecution; translocations to establish new populations of threatened species within their historic range; landscape manipulations to facilitate coexistence of susceptible species and their threats; control and eradication of invasive species; and ex situ practices, such as captive insurance colonies and genome storage for mitigating permanent species and genetic loss when threats cannot be abated immediately’ (Hayward et al 2019: 763) These interventions are justifiable to many environmentalists because they do not detract from the value of natural entities and processes, but rather restore value that was previously eroded by humans. Environmentalist aims imply, however, that we have reasons not to interfere with nature when the overall result is not preservation or restoration, but an intensification of anthropogenic change in natural entities and processes. This is the root of the problem, since nature is a source of serious harms for wild animals, which constitute more than 99% of all sentient beings (Tomasik 2009). Consider how some biological interactions among animals are harmful to at least one of the parties involved. These are phenomena, like predation or parasitism, in which an animal increases her fitness at the expense of another animal’s well-being. Some might concede that environmentalism fails to categorically forbid assisting wild animals that suffer by the hand of nature. If we accept that all sentient beings have moral standing, then circumscribed, benevolent assistance to individual animals may be justified. The rationale may be that, say, providing food or medical care to animals we encounter in nature is in one respect disvaluable because it disrupts certain valuable natural processes, but such disvalue is compensated by the benefits individual animals receive (Hettinger 2019: 72). Conversely, other authors have tried to reconcile concern for animals and concern for the environment by pointing out that nature is, on balance, good for animals. On this view, we have reasons to believe that harmful phenomena like predation are, in the long run, a net positive for the advancement of wild animals’ interests (Everett 2001: 59). Nature, however, is the source of too many harms to wild animals. Indeed, suffering most likely characterises the lives of wild animals, not because of human action but simply because of the ordinary workings of natural processes (Faria 2016, Horta 2010a, Ng 1995, Tomasik 2015). If this is true, nature is an axiological catastrophe by design. The interests of nonhuman animals are frustrated rather than satisfied by the ecosystems they inhabit. Nature might be home for them, but it is a cruel and ruinous one. Concern for the well-being of all animals provides us with some reasons to redesign such a home as far as practicable. We could try to phase out predation (McMahan 2010), reduce juvenile mortality (Johansen 2017) or use gene-drive technology to make animals more resistant to disease or parasites. At the limit, we may even attempt to engage in paradise engineering and abolish suffering altogether (Pearce 1995, Paez 2020). Suppose that we had the knowledge and the means to modify nature and engineer paradise for the sake of all sentient beings. According to some consequentialist animal ethicists (Faria 2016, Horta 2017b, Paez 2019), we would have strong—perhaps even decisive—reasons to interfere with nature in those ways, even if that clearly constitutes an anthropogenic modification of ecosystems that erodes certain natural processes. This is also true in the case of some non-consequentialist authors, like Martha Nussbaum, who advocate for ‘the gradual supplanting of the natural by the just’ (Nussbaum 2006: 400). Note how the claim that we have a general obligation to alleviate wild animal suffering is different from the more modest view, defended by Clare Palmer, that we have special obligations of assistance towards wild animals whose vulnerability to natural harms has been increased by human action (Palmer 2010). Even so, and importantly for our argument, Palmer admits that it may be permissible to intervene in nature to mitigate naturogenic harms (Palmer 2015). Concern for preserving certain natural processes, on the other hand, gives us reasons against such a redesign. We may have reasons to intervene in nature in order to repair the damage done by humans. It may be permissible, all things considered, to sometimes help individual wild animals suffering from natural harms. But re-engineering nature in order to immunise animals from naturogenic harms necessitates too great a loss from the vantage point of an environmentalist. Concern for the environment gives us reasons to intervene in nature in pursuit of conservationist aims, but against modifying nature for the sake of individual animals’ interests. Yet concern for those interests gives us reasons to, at the limit, overhaul nature. This normative tension is particularly pronounced between environmentalism and those positions in animal ethics that claim that we are required to intervene in nature in a large scale in order to help wild animals. The rest of this paper aims to show that even animal rights theories which do not entail a requirement to intervene in nature cannot overcome this incompatibility. This is because, if they are to remain plausible, these theories must concede that it is permissible, at least sometimes, to help wild animals in ways that environmentalism clearly forbids. TOM REGAN’S RIGHTS VIEW It seems appropriate for a survey of animal rights theories and the permissibility of overhauling nature to start with a discussion of Tom Regan’s seminal contribution (Regan 2004 [1985]). Regan (1992) was well aware of the differences that existed, as a matter of principle, between his rights view and the biocentric and holistic environmental ethics defended, respectively, by Holmes Rolston, III (1988) and J. Baird Callicott (1984, 1985). Beyond questions of principle, Regan made efforts to minimise the conflicts between his view with environmentalism in practice, especially with respect to the problem posed by predator-prey relationships (Regan 2004 [1985]: xxxvi-xxxviii, Regan 2013). Regan admits that we have a prima facie duty to assist a human child who is being stalked by a lion, but that we do not have that duty if the victim is, instead, a wildebeest (2004 [1985]: xxxvi). This is predicated on the assumption that wild animals in general––and predator and prey in particular––are competent to survive without our assistance. After all, he remarks, otherwise ‘there would be no prey species’ (xxxvii). This entails that our moral aim should merely be to provide wild animals ‘with the opportunity to live their own life, by their own lights, as best they can’ (357). Regan’s injunction to ‘let wild animals be’ implies much more than an obligation not to interfere in predator-prey relationships. It entails a broader obligation of non-intervention in the lives of wild animals. Nevertheless, it is clear that Regan understands this laissez-faire principle as a general rule admitting of exceptions (2004 [1985]: xxxvii). Regarding predator-prey relationships, however, non-intervention is appropriate on Regan’s rights view. The fact that a prey species persists despite predation is evidence of the group’s fitness for survival. It also means that enough of the species’ members survive in each generation to prevent the species from going extinct. Because of this, it at least appears as though wild animals are competent enough to navigate the trials associated with predation. Regan’s view would, however, permit human intervention to aid a wild animal, provided that we have sufficient evidence to believe that the animal is not competent enough to avoid some lethal harm, or that, being competent enough, she is hampered by bad luck. A laissez-faire view regarding wild animals cannot, then, ground a categorical prohibition on human interference in nature. Of course, this does not lead us to accept that redesigning nature to help wild animals would be mandatory on Regan’s view. First, for Regan, not all wild animals qualify as moral patients, or individuals to whom duties are owed morally speaking. Having the capacity for phenomenal experience, pleasure, or pain is not itself sufficient for moral patienthood. In addition, an individual must be a subject-of-a-life. That is, she should possess a unified psychology, beliefs and desires, a sense of her own future, an emotional life and ‘psychophysical identity over time’ (2004 [1985]: xvi, 243). Regan’s favoured view is that mammals of a year or more, and possibly birds and fish, are subjects-of-a-life (Regan 2003). This view excludes all invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians, and the millions of fish that die shortly after hatching from being considered moral patients. We thank an anonymous referee for stressing the need to clarify Regan’s subject-of-a-life criterion. Second, Regan recognises that, alongside the justice-based duties to respect the rights of subjects-of-a-life and to assist them when they are the victims of wrongdoing, his rights view is compatible with the existence of prima facie duties of beneficence. These are duties to assist individuals in need who are not victims of injustice, like wild animals suffering from naturogenic harms. Nevertheless, on his view, ‘the demands of justice always take precedence over the claims of beneficence’ (2004 [1985]: xxvii). Thus, it would be morally impermissible to intervene in nature in order to help wild animals suffering from predation, disease and other harms by violating the rights of other animals. Moreover, Regan insists that the duty of beneficence is subject to ‘important limitations.’ It must be understood as an imperfect duty which does not entail a requirement to aid others in need whenever there is the opportunity to do so. In this regard, the persistence of a species over time tells us nothing about how competent any given individual of that species is at surviving or how frequently her aims might be better achieved with human assistance. In fact, we know that many members of any given species will suffer and die as a result of natural events. This may be because they lack survival skills, are unfortunate, or both. Thus, wild animals are often not competent to survive in the way Regan describes them to be. Most animals, including invertebrates and small vertebrates, follow a reproductive strategy consisting in laying thousands or millions of eggs in each reproductive cycle. On average, only one hatchling per parent survives, the rest dying shortly after coming to existence (Ng 1995). In addition, when deciding whether or not to intervene in nature to help wild animals, it would be arbitrary to focus only on cases in which they are in mortal danger. We should also consider cases in which wild animals face other serious but non-lethal harms. As we explained above, wild animals routinely suffer from famine, drought, disease and extreme weather conditions. These are harms that many animals are not competent to avoid. Since wild animals are generally not nearly as competent when it comes to survival as Regan contends, there may be many instances of permissible human intervention in nature aimed at helping them. Suppose that we could advance the good of wild animals without infringing upon the rights of others by systematically redesigning nature. Perhaps we have developed vaccinations that can cure afflicted animals of disease. Maybe we can mass produce cultured meat and distribute it among predators in a way that saves their prey from predation. Suppose, in addition, that these interventions do not generate a risk of harm greater than the one we aim to avoid. In these and similar cases, there seems to be no morally relevant considerations against intervention on Regan’s rights view. If that is so, then there is a normative tension between the rights view and environmentalist positions. According to the former, redesigning nature to help wild animals is permissible, at least in some cases. According to the latter, pursuing the aim of preserving inherently valuable natural entities and processes (like the trophic chain) requires us not to intervene. Thus, despite Regan’s best efforts, his rights view and environmentalism are not reconciled in practice. 4. POGGEAN ANIMAL RIGHTS Sydney Faught (2019) constructs an account of animal rights within a Poggean framework to reconcile concern for animals with environmentalism. In this section, we lay out her proposal for how a Poggean theory of animal rights can be made consistent with a commitment to the preservation of predator-prey relationships, the special protection of endangered species and the management of species overpopulation. Then, we argue that her view ultimately fails to resolve a crucial tension between animal ethics and environmental ethics––namely, that her view permits redesigning nature in ways that would be impermissible on environmentalism. Thomas Pogge draws a distinction between natural rights violations and human rights violations (Pogge 2008: 58–77). A natural rights violation is committed when an individual is deprived of the object of her rights. The object of one’s right, as both Pogge and Faught understand it, is the subject matter of a right. Thus, for instance, an individual X’s car is the object of her right to personal property. If some random individual were to steal X’s car, this would constitute a natural rights violation because X would be deprived of the object of her right to personal property––namely, her car. Pogge, however, is concerned with better understanding human rights violations, which occur when an individual is deprived of access to the object of her rights. Suppose that X’s car was confiscated arbitrarily by the government, or the government enabled random individuals to steal X’s car with impunity by enforcing certain laws corruptly. These, for Pogge, would count as examples of human rights violations because X is not only being deprived of the object of her right to personal property, but of access to the object of her right. This example is lifted directly from Faught (2019: 42). Another example that could be used to understand this distinction can be found in Pogge (2011). By creating and supporting supranational political institutions that fail to secure the global poor access to the objects of their right to life, citizens of the developed world are violating their human rights (Pogge 2011: 2–3). Were some random individual to murder an impoverished person X, on the other hand, X’s natural right to life would be violated. In both cases, natural and human rights violations occur when human agents can be held responsible for depriving individuals of (access to) the objects of their rights. A human rights violation, however, specifically focuses on the ways in which institutions, rather than a random individual or citizen, either deprive a person of––or fail to secure her access to––the object of her rights. Pogge is most concerned with how humans are wronged by the configuration of political institutions, which is why he calls these deprivations human rights violations. Faught suggests, however, that Pogge’s theoretical framework can help us understand not only how humans but also nonhuman animals are deprived of access to the objects of their rights. Human agents can be held responsible for depriving individuals, be they human or nonhuman, of access to the objects of certain rights, like perhaps rights to life and protection from inhumane treatment (Faught 2019: 41–42). Neither Pogge nor Faught defend an exhaustive list of what rights individuals have. These are simply some rights that both humans and nonhumans might have which human agents could be held responsible for violating. Faught argues, on Poggean grounds, that humans are not obligated to mitigate the harms of predation. She claims that humans have no duty to interfere with animal behavior that affect other animals’ access to the object of their rights ‘where human actions have not rendered animal access to the objects of their rights insecure.’ Thus, humans have no obligation to provide natural predators with food alternatives that do not require the killing of prey nor to provide predators with prey when they face scarcity (Faught 2019: 44). A respect for the rights of animals on Faught’s understanding is thus made consistent with respect for the ecological status quo, even if it is characterised by predation. Faught also argues that her framework would not require that we be indifferent about the endangered status of a species. Rather, it would allow us to ‘reject those institutions and policies that inadequately address the deprivations being faced by an entire marginalized group’ (Faught 2019: 43). Here, Faught draws upon Pogge (2008), where it is argued that it would be unjust for citizens of a society to help sustain a social order that deprives people of access to the objects of their rights. For example, it would be unjust for citizens to sustain a social order that enslaves black people, disenfranchises women, or mistreats workers (Pogge 2008: 66). Similarly, Faught argues that it would be unjust for citizens to stand idly by as members of an endangered species are driven to the brink of extinction because of the extreme deprivations they face, assuming those deprivations are anthropogenic. Imagine, however, that the deprivation faced by an endangered species is (a) one involving a scarcity of natural prey in their habitat, and (b) not caused by human beings. The Poggean framework does not oblige us to protect the members of this endangered species. It does, however, seem to permit that we help this species’ members granted that the aid we provide does not deprive other individuals of the objects of their rights. Suppose that members of this species could be sustained by cultured meat and that we had the means to produce it in sufficient quantities. In principle, we might even go so far as to redesign nature in order to prevent any sort of harm from befalling members of this endangered species. It would be unproblematic, on Faught’s own view, to take steps toward ridding the natural world of the harms associated with predation. Consider another scenario where humans may interfere in the natural world to facilitate animals’ access to the object of their rights. Imagine that a species is overpopulated, and that this was not caused by human beings. This overpopulation leads to sickness and food scarcity in the members of the species. Faught’s framework does not require that we aid these animals. But it does seem to allow us to aid them insofar as we do not deprive other animals of access to the objects of their rights. In aiding members of this overpopulated species, we may provide them with medicine and food and implement harmless methods of birth control. At the limit, if we had the knowledge and the means to do so, we may attempt to genetically reengineer them in order to make them more resistant to disease or increase their efficiency in processing nutrients and water. To the extent that these things can be done without violating the rights of others, Faught’s animal rights framework would permit paradise engineering. Thus, even within the Poggean institutional framework advanced by Faught, there remains a tension between concern for the environment and concern for animals. According to this view, humans are allowed, though not required, to aid nonhuman animals that fall victim to non-anthropogenic deprivations in ways that are forbidden by a standard reading of environmentalism. If that is so, then there is no problem with degrading valuable natural processes to the end of helping some wild animals, provided that there are no animal rights violations in the process. This shows that Faught’s theorization also fails to fully reconcile animal ethics with environmental ethics. A NOVEL APPROACH: LIBERTARIAN ANIMAL RIGHTS Recently, some authors have explored the possibility of a libertarian approach to animal rights (Ebert & Machan 2012, Milburn 2017a, Milburn 2017b). Michael Huemer, a leading libertarian academic, has written extensively about ethical vegetarianism (Huemer 2019). Though he has not advocated for policies that would politically protect nonhuman animals by appealing to libertarianism specifically, he has discussed why libertarians ought to afford animals better treatment on a personal level (Huemer et al. 2020). The present paper aims to show how some version of animal rights could be made compatible with libertarianism beyond the more modest claim that any individual libertarian could care for nonhuman animals out of the goodness of her heart and encourage others to do so as well. In this section, we build upon these works and the thought of Robert Nozick to explain how nonhuman animals can be rights-bearers on a libertarian account. Then, we explore whether this account of animal rights is normatively compatible with environmentalism. Ultimately, we argue that on a libertarian theory of animal rights it is permissible to alter the natural world in ways that environmental ethics typically forbids, revealing that there still exists an incompatibility between animal ethics and environmental ethics. In his Philosophical Explanations (1981) and The Examined Life (1989), Nozick grounds his conception of rights in what he terms ‘the meaning of life’ (1981: 571–647, 2006: 162–169). For Nozick, meaning is created in an individual’s life when she freely chooses to integrate things of value beyond herself into her life. When libertarians claim that an individual acts freely, they often mean that she acts without human agents unjustly impeding on her ability to act. Milburn (2017a) articulates this when he specifies that the human right to freedom, for Nozick, is freedom from human interference (105). Suppose that you recognise value in learning to play the piano. According to Nozick, you create meaning in your life when, perhaps among other things, you freely choose to learn to play it. In this case, whether or not your life is meaningful depends at least in part upon your having both the capacity and the freedom to learn how to play the piano. Thus, for individuals to more generally create meaning in their lives, they must both (a) have the capacity to integrate things of value beyond themselves into their lives and (b) live in conditions where they can freely do this. These conditions, according to the libertarian, are most likely to be realised when persons––or individuals uniquely capable of creating meaning in their lives––have their negative rights to life, liberty, and property recognised and respected. However, it has recently been suggested that this reasoning can lend itself to the extension of strong negative rights to life, liberty, and property from humans (as is characteristic of libertarianism) to many sentient beings. Indeed, many sentient nonhuman animals have the potential to ‘freely create and sustain links to valuable entities beyond themselves (say, the affection a cow has for her calf)’ (Milburn 2017a: 104–105). Being sentient consists precisely in the ability to perceive certain objects, or states of affairs, as valuable or disvaluable—even if, as far as we know, only some humans can reflect on the axiological principles underlying their valuations. If the ability to create meaning in one’s life grounds rights and nonhuman animals are capable of creating meaning in their lives by sustaining links to valuable entities beyond themselves, then nonhuman animals can be understood as rights-bearers consistent with a libertarian account of animal ethics. With these bearings, a libertarian animal ethicist can easily make the case for why humans are not obligated to eliminate predation in the wild. To somebody like Regan, it would make a difference whether wild predators are moral agents or not in determining our obligations as humans to mitigating the harms associated with predation. If natural predators were moral agents, and we concluded that their predatory activities constituted wrongful violations of their victim’s rights, then our duty to save prey would be grounded on considerations of justice rather than beneficence. Libertarian justice, however, does not require individuals to assist others whose rights are being violated, much less when they are harmed by innocent threats or natural events. In this paper, we do not discuss at length the nature of the coercive enforceability of duties generated by rights. For an extended discussion on why a duty to easy rescue may be coercively unenforceable, see Flanigan (2018). It merely requires that individuals not violate the rights of others. Thus, even if predation was an instance of a rights violation, we would not be required to stop predators from hunting their prey. The interests of prey may be protected by rights, but we have the right to choose whether to enforce them or not (Ebert & Machan 2012). Ebert & Machan (2012) argue that a police force might be established in a libertarian society for non-justice reasons legitimated by special obligations that individuals may have to one another as members of a political society. On this understanding, we are not required as individuals to enforce the rights of others as a matter of justice, but we may have non-justice, supererogatory reasons for enforcing the rights of others. Thus, a wildlife police force that polices predation would not be required by libertarian justice in the same way that a human police force would not be (2012: 155). A libertarian account of nonhuman property rights may also be able to offer satisfactory solutions to some problems related to the protection of endangered species and the management of species overpopulation. Some have argued that nonhuman animals have property rights on the basis of the interests they have in their habitats (Hadley 2015, Cooke 2017), or because property is indispensable to their development as agents (Kianpour 2020). Here, however, we will focus specifically on a Lockean labour-mixing account of nonhuman animal property acquisition, since Nozick draws heavily upon Locke in developing his libertarianism. In his Second Treatise (2005), Locke argues that humans come to own things by mixing their labour with the external world: ‘He that is nourished by the Acorns he pickt up under an Oak, or the Apples he gathered from the Trees in the Wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. No Body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, When did they begin to be his? When he digested? Or when he eat? Or when he boiled? Or when he brought them home? Or when he pickt them up? And ‘tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could’ (2005: 2.28). Milburn (2017b) likewise argues that nonhuman animals can come to own objects since they are able to mix labour in a manner comparable to that of the gatherer of acorns and apples described above. There are, however, limits on the extent to which an individual can acquire property in this way. Locke claims that for an object to be justifiably appropriated, there must be ‘enough, and as good, left in common for others’ (2005: 2.27). Let us stipulate, for our purposes, that this means that the acquisition of property is unjust when it leaves some other rights-bearers in a worse position than they would be in a world without any appropriation. For an extended discussion on why the Lockean proviso should be interpreted in this manner, see Milburn (2016). Consider the following example, presented by Milburn (2016), of how this would come to bear on the just acquisition of property in practice: ‘A corporation acquires a large area of wood-land containing a number of rights bearing nonhuman animals with the intention of destroying it. Grant the plausible assumptions that industrialised logging (possible only because of historical appropriation) will have a more adverse effect on the resident nonhuman animals than gathering wood by hand, and that said non-human animals have experienced few if any of the benefits of private ownership that Nozick attributes to humans in general. The corporation now risks harming the nonhuman animals to the extent that they would be better off living in a world in which there was no appropriation … Options open to the corporation, if they are keen to continue with their logging operation, may include enhancing an area of the woodland so that the nonhuman animals can live more comfortably (though they have less space) or moving the nonhuman animals to some other location (taking care not to harm either the beings moved or the beings already resident in the new location)’ (2016: 8–9). Now suppose that a species becomes endangered because people act in ways that harm the interests of its members. Suppose further that, on some accounts, those interests are protected by these animals’ property rights. And suppose that members of this species are being made worse off because some other party acquired property in a manner that does not comport with leaving ‘enough, and as good, left in common for others.’ A libertarian would claim that these actions are morally wrong since they constitute rights violations. An environmentalist would agree that a wrong is committed, even if for different reasons. She would claim that these actions are wrong because they destroy natural entities and processes that possess inherent value. Similarly, suppose that we know in advance that if animals from a certain non-native species are introduced in an ecosystem, its population will grow out of control. Nevertheless, we choose to release them in that new environment because we find them pretty. Or we decide to keep them as pets, even though we are aware that some of them will inevitably escape into the wild. We also know that when they do, they will invade the territory of some indigenous nonhuman animals and compete against them for scarce resources necessary for survival. This will make it even more difficult for these animals to satisfy their basic needs. We, as moral agents, would be subjecting other right-holders to serious harms to their life and health. It is morally wrong for moral agents like humans to seriously and foreseeably wrong others. Thus, the libertarian account of animal rights forbids the introduction of potentially harmful non-native species into ecosystems. As before, an environmentalist would agree with the libertarian’s conclusion, even if on different grounds. Libertarianism does not require that we assist others as a matter of justice unless we contract for it. But, of course, libertarianism does not forbid us from aiding others. Charity is morally permissible. Imagine a benevolent billionaire who learns about the harms that wild animals endure because of predation or parasitism. She chooses to help some of these animals. She may invest her fortune, for instance, in developing and distributing cultured meat to predators. Or she may pay someone to genetically engineer non-sentient embryo predators into herbivores to later release them as adults in the ecosystem so that predation gradually disappears over time (McMahan 2015; Pearce 2015 [1995]). Korsgaard (2018) argues that it would be wrong to genetically modify predators. Genetic changes would not be identity preserving, causing the original individuals to cease to exist and replacing them by numerically distinct successors. That would amount to treating predators as mere ends for the benefit of other nonhuman individuals —their prey. Elsewhere one of us has argued, against Korsgaard, that genetic changes can be identity-preserving so long as they are compatible with an individual’s functional psychological unity over time (Paez 2019). Physiological changes that would turn predators into herbivores can satisfy this condition. She has so much money, in fact, that she could pay to manufacture an artificial habitat where resident animals would be insulated from naturogenic harms. This could plausibly be done without violating any human or nonhuman right. This kind of intervention would be, on the libertarian view, morally permissible. Nevertheless, environmental ethics tells us that it would be impermissible to reduce animal suffering in this way, since it constitutes a large-scale human interference in ecosystems that eliminates certain natural processes that are intrinsically valuable. This is one important way in which a libertarian account of animal rights and environmentalism stand in tension with one another. Let us consider again the situations in which a species is endangered, or in which some animals suffer because of the growth in the population of others. This time, however, imagine this is because of entirely natural causes. We are aware that naturogenic climate change and other natural phenomena have led to the extinction of some species, as well as to the expansion and migration of others (Urban 2015; Pecl et al. 2017). If we endorse a libertarian account of animal rights, we will not believe that we have a duty to intervene so as to prevent these natural harms. Yet again, intervening in order to mitigate or prevent the suffering of some of the wild animals affected by these events would be morally permissible, provided that our interference violates no one’s rights. On an environmentalist view, this type of intervention would be morally forbidden insofar as it amounts to an extensive anthropogenic interference in valuable natural processes. Here is another way in which a libertarian animal rights theorist and an environmentalist might disagree. We acknowledged before that both would conclude, even if on different grounds, that it is unjustified to introduce a non-native species in potentially harmful ways. But suppose we have already committed this wrong. Plausibly, then, we would have a duty to correct it. An environmentalist position implies that that remedy consists in restoring the ecosystem to the state it was in before human interference. This will require, in some cases, eliminating the members of the non-native species in ways that violate their rights to life and bodily integrity. Culling invasive species is a common government policy in many jurisdictions, such as Australia (BBC 2020) or the UK (Carrington 2019). On a libertarian animal rights view, the remedy may consist, alternatively, in compensating the animals who were harmed by the introduction of the newcomers. Some authors argue that we have duties of restorative justice towards wild animals harmed by anthropogenic climate change (Palmer 2019, Pepper 2019). If so, plausibly, we ought to compensate wild animals for other wrongful harms, such as those that may result from the introduction of a new species. It could also consist in preventing future rights violations. This need not require completely eliminating members of the non-native species, but merely relocating them or reducing their populations to acceptable levels in ways that do not violate their rights, for instance through contraceptive animal feed. Additionally, wild animals can be compensated for rights violations and insured against future rights violations by supplanting harmful natural processes with manufactured ecosystems that are specially designed to minimise or eradicate predation, parasitism, illness and other natural harms. There would be further conflicts. Suppose we discovered that by relocating a species to a new ecosystem that some of its members would live happier lives, and no other animal would be negatively affected. On a libertarian view, it would be permissible for a benevolent billionaire to do so at her own expense. However, an environmentalist view could claim that this constitutes an unjustified anthropogenic interference in nature. More generally, what would be a case of permissible beneficence on libertarianism—proving a net benefit for wild animals—might be an instance of wrongdoing on environmentalism given the circumstances. And so, the libertarian animal rights approach does not resolve the tension we have flagged that exists between exhibiting concern for animals and concern for the environment. 6. TWO PROBABLY IRRECONCILABLE DOCTRINES In this paper, we began by identifying a tension between the different aims of action posited, respectively, by animal ethics and environmental ethics. We have surveyed promising candidates for resolving the tension, including both traditional and novel animal rights theories. None of these views succeed in overcoming this incompatibility. Some other animal rights views are, of course, possible, but we think none of them are likely to succeed in resolving the tension that we point out. To do so, an animal rights theory should tell us that it is impermissible to eliminate naturogenic wild animal suffering, even if we could do so at little cost to ourselves and even if we were sufficiently confident that no animals would have their rights violated in the process. Nevertheless, a theory like that strikes us as implausible. If one endorses both the aim of preserving nature and the aim of respecting or advancing the interests of animals, it then becomes necessary to specify under what circumstances one should be subordinated to the other, and vice versa, when the two come into conflict. Different authors with environmentalist intuitions may order the conflicting aims of animal ethics and environmental ethics in different ways. Suppose that someone believes that certain natural entities have inherent value and that we should aim to preserve them. Suppose that, at the same time, they believed that this aim must always give way to advancing the interests of sentient beings. Should we call this an environmentalist view? This is the main theoretical objection in Hayward et al (2019) and Callen et al. (2020) against compassionate conservation. They answer this question in the negative, since they understand this approach as treating conservation as ancillary to the protection of individual animal welfare and thus being animal liberation in disguise If we answer yes, then we could say, given how we use the term, that these positions are compatible with one another. If we answer no, we would say that they are incompatible. This is, however, merely a terminological question. The substantive issue is whether non-sentient entities possess inherent value and to what extent preserving them must prevail over the interests of sentient beings, given that nature is likely the greatest source of suffering for them. Thus, the philosophically interesting task lies in producing arguments that show how these conflicting aims ought to be ordered and for what reasons. We believe that the interests of sentient beings, human or nonhuman, matter more than non-sentient natural entities and processes, whatever the circumstances. It is beyond the scope of this article to argue for this view, but compelling arguments to that effect can be found in Regan (1992) and Faria & Paez (2019). It must be stressed that none of this entails that animal advocates and environmental activists should treat each other as adversaries. However serious the theoretical differences between animal ethics and environmentalism may be, there are important areas of practical convergence. Most importantly, members of these social movements share the political goal of abolishing factory farming, which is a major contributor to climate change (Ritchie 2020). Still, the problem of naturogenic wild animal suffering and the extent to which large-scale modifications of nature are permissible remains a point of contention. Must we resign ourselves to the fact that nature is ‘red in tooth and claw’ or may we try to change it if we so desire? As our capacity to redesign nature increases, we cannot avoid choosing whether to exercise it or not. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank two anonymous referees at Environmental Values, in addition to Andrew I. Cohen and Oscar Horta, for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this piece. Their criticisms and insights improved our arguments considerably. We would also like to recognize the important role that the ‘Just Animals?’ panel at the 2019 Manchester Centre for Political Theory Workshops played in the writing of this paper. 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