The objection
"Helping wild animals will only drag out their agony. If their lives are full of suffering, keeping them alive longer would be worse."
Not all animals have bad lives
Most animals in the wild have very short, hard lives, but not all of them. Some animals, especially those that survive to adulthood, may have good lives. Helping them can do a lot of good.
Suffering and death go together
In nature, what causes suffering usually also causes death: hunger and disease, for example. So helping an animal not starve to death also frees it from the suffering of hunger. It's not just making life longer; it's removing the cause of the suffering.
Why suffering wins out
One of the reasons suffering dominates the lives of wild animals is precisely that almost all of them die very young, with no time to have good experiences. Helping the ones who manage to live longer can mean giving them the chance at a good life.
Helping doesn't always mean making life longer
Besides, not all help means keeping animals alive. Reducing the number of babies born only to die young, for example, prevents suffering without dragging out any bad life.
In short
- Not all wild animals have bad lives.
- Helping against hunger and disease also removes suffering.
- Many kinds of help don't involve making lives longer at all.