Does the Proposal to Help Wild Animals Violate Their Freedom?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VII, p. 29 of the PDF edition · English translation

It is sometimes argued that the proposal to help wild animals should be rejected because it would allegedly violate the freedom of the animals who would be helped.

The response to this objection consists simply in pointing out that exactly the opposite is the case. This proposal is in fact essential for animals to exercise their freedom, since it would prevent the things that hinder its exercise: extreme suffering and premature death. In short, it is not helping animals that results in animals being unable to exercise their freedom, since they will be dead or in extreme suffering.

It could be objected that there are situations in which we must choose between securing an animal's freedom and ensuring that it is free from suffering or death. This would be the case, for example, if we had to choose between either leaving an animal free in the wild, but subject to all the risks this entails, or removing it from there and placing it in, say, a sanctuary, where it would be cared for and protected but would have access to a much smaller area.

A first important point to note about this objection is that it assesses the degree of freedom by the size of the space available for movement. But there is another way of assessing the degree of freedom: by the extent to which someone is able to fulfill their interests. According to this second way of assessing it, it is possible to have less space and more freedom, and vice versa. For example, if an animal is in the wild, it will have more space than in a sanctuary. But if this also means being injured, diseased, without access to food or water, being attacked, etc., it means not fulfilling even its most basic interests. Likewise, it is possible that in another situation the animal has less space but, because it is cared for and protected, its possibility of fulfilling its interests is much greater. In short, if the degree of freedom depends on the extent to which someone fulfills their interests, this does not necessarily coincide with being in a larger territorial area.

Note that this does not imply that it would therefore be better for animals to be in zoos, precisely because being in a zoo does not coincide with animals being able to fulfill their interests. Sanctuaries are essentially different from zoos. In a sanctuary, the goal is to benefit the animals. In a zoo, the goal is to provide entertainment for humans, disregarding what would be best for the animals.

However, let us suppose for the sake of argument that freedom should be defined solely in terms of the size of the area someone is in. If so, it is not at all clear that what is best for animals would be to be in a larger area, suffer more, and die prematurely.

It could be objected that many animals flee from attempts to rescue them from disaster situations such as fires and floods, or from attempts to vaccinate them, and that this shows that what animals value most is being free from human interference, even if this means suffering more and dying prematurely. However, the appropriate way to assess what someone values most is not by what that someone actually chooses, but by what that someone would choose if they had access to the relevant information²³. In the cases in question, the animals very probably flee because they do not know that, in these cases, the humans are there to help them, and above all because they do not know the terrible fate that awaits them in a fire or a flood. If this information were available to them, they would very probably choose to receive help.

Thus, if freedom is defined in terms of the size of the territorial area, then the claim that animals value freedom above everything else is false. This also holds in the human case. For example, given the definition of freedom the objection assumes, if we were dropped in the middle of the Sahara desert we would have more freedom. But no one chooses this for themselves, precisely because they know it would mean suffering and death. This shows that we value being free from suffering and not dying more highly than being in a larger area. And there is no reason to think that the opposite happens in the case of animals, since they too are seriously harmed by suffering and by death.

Some people argue that animals should be left to fend for themselves, “free” in the wild to suffer and die, not because the animals value this, but because they themselves value leaving animals in such conditions. But if so, then the claim that such a position is concerned with respecting animals' interests is merely a rhetorical device, aimed at masking a position that in fact involves a complete disregard

for animals. Those who hold this position often tend to accuse the proposal to help wild animals of being anthropocentric. As should now be clear, it is this position that is anthropocentric.

In fact, this is very common. There are a number of positions that advocate attitudes highly harmful to animals, but present themselves as positions concerned with respecting them. At the same time, those who hold these positions tend to portray genuine proposals to defend and help animals as involving some disrespect for animals. This is a common strategy, for example, among those who exploit animals and in the discourse that tries to justify environmentalist practices of killing animals²⁴. It is therefore to be expected that the same strategy of dishonest rhetoric would emerge among those who are against helping animals living in the wild.