Objection 1: "we can't help them all"
There are so many animals in the wild that we'll never be able to help them all. So why try?
Answer: nobody would take this objection seriously in the human case. Nobody says it isn't worth saving some people in a disaster just because we can't save everyone. Every animal we help is one less being suffering.
Objection 2: "it's better to work on problems where we can help a bigger share"
Some say that, since the number of wild animals is gigantic, helping a small percentage of them wouldn't be a good use of our resources. It would be better to focus on smaller problems, where we can solve a bigger share.
Answer: the mistake is measuring results by percentage instead of by the actual amount of help.
Imagine that, with the same money, we could:
- help 90% of the animals in problem A, which involves 1,000 animals (that's 900 animals);
- or help 0.1% of the animals in problem B, which involves 10 million animals (that's 10,000 animals).
If they're all equally badly off, helping 10,000 animals does much more good than helping 900, even though 0.1% looks tiny.
In short
- Not being able to help everyone is no reason to help no one.
- Efficiency should be measured by the actual amount of help.
- A small percentage of a huge problem can be a lot of individuals.