The accusation
"People who want to help wild animals see humans as separate from nature, as if we weren't part of it."
Who separates humans from nature?
The author answers that it's the other way around. It's the position against helping that sees humans as separate: it says that if humans influence something, it stops being natural. In other words, it treats humans as "outsiders."
Humans are animals and are part of nature. Human help for animals is also part of what happens in the natural world.
"What isn't natural is human actions"
Someone might say: "Humans are natural, but what they do isn't." But why would human actions be any less natural than a beaver building a dam?
"But helping goes against natural processes"
It's true that helping animals goes against processes like hunger and disease. But for that to be wrong, someone would have to show:
- that we have duties to things that can't feel, like natural processes;
- and that those duties count more than the good of the animals who suffer.
Neither has been shown. And fighting disease with medicine is exactly what we do for humans.
In short
- Humans are part of nature.
- It's the position against helping that separates humans from nature.
- Going against natural processes isn't wrong just because it goes against them.