What Should We Do About Animals Living in the Wild?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VII, p. 8 of the PDF edition · English translation

A common belief is that, as far as animals living in the wild are concerned, we should simply stop harming them and “leave them alone,” and help them only if they are harmed directly or indirectly by human practices. When animals are victims of natural processes such as natural disasters, hunger, thirst, and disease, according to this position we should “let nature take its course.”

This position has been increasingly challenged in recent years¹. One possible challenge is to accuse it of anthropocentric speciesism, in the sense of maintaining an arbitrary moral standard depending on whether the victims are human or nonhuman, since when humans are victims of hunger, thirst, disease, and natural disasters, its proponents do not say “let nature take its course.”

Another challenge holds that limiting moral consideration for animals to harms resulting from human practices is incompatible with truly caring about the good of animals. For example, it would be very strange to say, “I care about this person's good, but I would only save her from a fire caused by humans; in a naturally caused fire, I would let her burn to death.” In other words, the argument is that if we truly care about animals (and not about an ideal of supposed “human purity” – not doing harm but letting harm occur), we will hold that they should be helped regardless of whether they are victims of human practices or of natural processes.

At other times, it is acknowledged that we have reasons to prevent animals from being harmed by natural harms, but it is argued that these reasons are weaker than when the harms result from human practices. Here, however, the criticism would be the same: if we truly care about the good of the victims, and not about an ideal of “human purity,” our criterion for determining priority will be based on the magnitude of the harm, not on the origin of the harm. That is, we will prioritize preventing the most serious harms, regardless of whether they result from human practices or from natural processes.

These, in short, are the central arguments of the proposal to help animals who are victims of natural processes. In the rest of this book, we will address the debate surrounding this proposal.