Must Environmentalists Oppose Helping Wild Animals?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VII, p. 51 of the PDF edition · English translation

20.1. Introduction

Respect for animals and environmentalism have very divergent foundations and goals⁴⁵. Environmentalists value nonsentient entities, such as species and ecosystems, in themselves. Respect for animals, meanwhile, is grounded in consideration for sentient individuals, capable of suffering and enjoyment⁴⁶. Because of this divergence, one might think that once someone accepts environmentalist goals, they must disagree with the proposal to help animals living in the wild, since that proposal is centered on concern for the good of individuals.

This view is mistaken for three reasons:

(1) There are some ways of helping wild animals that would also help achieve environmentalist goals.

(2) There are many ways of helping animals in the wild that, although they would not help achieve environmentalist goals, would not conflict with environmentalist goals.

(3) Even with respect to the ways of helping that would conflict with environmentalist goals, there are reasons to defend a priority of preventing the suffering and deaths of sentient beings over those goals (and this holds even if we ought to accept environmentalist goals).

Below we will look at each of these points in detail.

20.2. Ways of Helping Animals That Would Also Achieve Environmentalist Goals

There are programs to help wild animals that could help achieve both the goal of reducing animals' suffering and deaths and environmentalist goals. One example is the vaccination of bees⁴⁷. From an environmentalist point of view, vaccinating them is good

because it reduces the risk of extinction of bee species. Animal advocates, for their part, have reasons to approve of these programs because vaccination is good for the bees themselves, preventing them from getting sick and dying.

Another example is the protection of large herbivores. Environmentalists have reasons to protect them because several of their species are at risk of extinction. Animal advocates, for their part, have two strong reasons to support this kind of program. The first is that such programs reduce the suffering and deaths of the large herbivores themselves, who are then vaccinated, medicated, and given water, food, shelter, etc.⁴⁸ The second, and more important, is that these animals consume a large amount of vegetation that, if it were available, would contribute to a greater number of births in those animal species whose vast majority are born only to suffer and die prematurely⁴⁹. In short, protecting large herbivores can greatly reduce the total number of animals who would be born only to suffer and die prematurely.

Of course, this is a measure that must be investigated in depth, since in each population of large herbivores there could be some other factor that would make their presence increase the suffering of other animals in some other way. However, the aim here is only to show some examples of helping wild animals that both animal advocates and environmentalists could support, albeit for different reasons.

20.3. Ways of Helping Animals That Do Not Conflict with Environmentalist Goals

The proposal to help wild animals and environmentalist goals would perhaps not conflict in the vast majority of cases. For example, the different environmentalist positions on which entities are morally considerable (ecocentrism, biocentrism, and naturocentrism) have no reason to oppose the great majority of programs to help wild animals⁵⁰. We will look at this in more detail below.

Ecocentrism⁵¹ values certain ecosystems (because they are very complex, very rare, formed a long time ago, etc.). Most programs to help

animals living in the wild would neither extinguish these ecosystems nor alter the properties of theirs that ecocentrists value: they would merely mean less suffering and fewer premature deaths for their inhabitants.

Biocentrism⁵², in turn, values what it calls the “good of its own” of each living organism, sentient or not. That is, what biocentrism aims at is not maximizing the number of living beings, but ensuring that each existing living being can achieve its own good. Biocentrism has to accept even more interventions than proponents of a sentience-centered ethics do, since it must seek to secure the good of sentient beings and, in addition, also protect nonsentient organisms.

Finally, naturocentrism⁵³ values only ecosystems that have not yet been altered (or have been altered very little) by human activities. Given the climate change resulting from human practices, with the exception perhaps of some ecosystems in the depths of the ocean, all ecosystems have already been considerably altered by human practices. Therefore, naturocentrism would have to accept helping animals in all these ecosystems.

Of course, what has been said above does not mean that no environmentalist position whatsoever would ever conflict with the proposal to help wild animals. For example, there could be a variant of naturocentrism according to which ecosystems that have already been transformed by human action would still have value, but would have less value the more human interference had already occurred. According to such a position, we should seek to preserve the value that remains by prohibiting new interventions, or even restore the ecosystem to its state prior to the first human intervention. This variant would therefore oppose programs to help wild animals.

However, the fact that the proposal to help wild animals conflicts with environmentalist goals in certain cases does not mean that we should reject helping animals in those cases, since there may be reasons to prioritize the good of sentient beings over environmentalist goals. This will be explained in more detail in the next section.

20.4. Reasons to Prioritize Sentient Beings over Environmentalist Goals

Attempts are sometimes made to argue against the proposal to help wild animals by claiming that nonsentient entities such as species and ecosystems have value in themselves (and not as a means of securing the good of sentient beings). The idea that there is value beyond sentience is controversial, to say the least. However, let us suppose for the sake of argument that we ought to accept environmentalist goals. This would not imply that we must therefore reject the proposal to help wild animals. This is because, even if it were shown that the entities valued in environmentalism have intrinsic value, this would not show that they are more important than the good of sentient beings, much less that they are the only thing that matters. We will look at these points in more detail below.

If what is relevant for someone to be morally considerable is being capable of being harmed or benefited, then we must give moral consideration to all sentient beings, since sentience is what makes someone capable of being harmed or benefited, as we saw in Chapter 4. For this reason, the environmentalist view that nonsentient entities are morally considerable is already difficult to ground, and even more so the idea that sentient beings are not morally considerable, or that these entities are more important than the good of sentient beings.

For example, even if we accepted environmentalist goals, there would still be reasons, in cases of conflict, to prioritize sentient beings. One of these reasons is that, unlike the entities valued in environmentalism, sentient beings can literally be harmed and benefited, whether through negative experiences (all forms of suffering) or through being deprived of positive experiences (as happens when they die). These forms of harm are particularly serious (just consider how hard we try to avoid them ourselves), and no nonsentient entity is capable of suffering such harms.

When what is at stake is the good of humans, this is already widely accepted, including by environmentalists themselves. They generally hold that environmentalist goals are more important than certain human interests (such as economic and recreational interests), but they do not claim that we should leave humans to suffer and die as a result of natural processes. But if speciesism is unjustifiable, then there is also no justification for holding that we should not help animals who are victims of natural processes.