If it is also morally important to alleviate the suffering and death of nonhuman animals, then the question arises as to whether we should begin to end predation in the wild. Therefore, my aim in this paper is to seriously consider the question of whether we have a duty to prevent predation in the wild. In the following chapters, I will focus on animals that are wild in the first two senses, that is, animals that are locationally and constitutively wild.
The second is that wild animals do not have a happy and peaceful life in the wild. Recently, Heather Browning and Walter Veit questioned the pessimistic picture of nature.22 They argue that although it is true that animals in the wild suffer, it is not clear that they suffer so much that they live quite poorly. Conversely, if we mistakenly underestimate how much wild animals suffer in the wild and do nothing to improve their situation, we will miss an opportunity to alleviate a bad situation.24 I agree that we need empirical research to substantiate the extent of wildlife suffering .
But while we await relevant evidence, I will assume that wild animals face many challenges in nature and that predation is a source of harm in terms of the pain, trauma and death it causes. I will argue that both of these arguments fail to demonstrate that there is generally no duty to prevent predation in the wild.
Letting the Wild Be
32 Callicott, "The Conceptual Foundation of the Land Ethic", 251; Leopold, A Sandy County Alamac and Sketches Here and There 203. 37 Leopold, A Sandy County Alamac and Sketches Here and There, 204; Callicott, “The Conceptual Foundation of the Land Ethic,” 253. Ecological holism boldly asserts that above all, we have a moral obligation to protect the integrity of the biotic community.
67 Leopold, A Sandy County Alamac and Sketches Here and There, 204; Callicott, “The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic,” 258. A person has moral significance only by virtue of being a member of a biotic community. Our duty to respect the human right to life precedes our duty to support the integrity of the biotic community.
It is unclear how the ultimate value of the biotic community will be enough to reassure us that whatever we do for its sake will be morally acceptable. In short, I have challenged ecological holism by undermining its central claim that the preservation of the biotic community is the ultimate good. In the next section, I consider another argument in support of the claim that we should not intervene in wild animal communities.
According to Donaldson and Kymlicka's account, outside intervention is permitted because the structure of the community conflicts with individual flourishing.
Wild Animal Rights
On the other hand, sentient beings have the right to avoid suffering and not to be killed by moral agents without substantial justification.154. So it is possible that animals have at least some basic rights, including the right to life and the right not to suffer unnecessarily. Regan concludes that we do not have a just duty to save preyed animals from the harm of predation.159.
One objection questions Regan's claim that we only have a rights-based duty to save someone if their rights are violated, implying that people have no right to be saved from predation. Since the child is not a moral agent, she cannot possibly violate her father's rights, and the father is therefore not entitled to the assistance of the witness (according to Regan). In sum, Regan's rationale for the claim that no rights holder has a right to be saved from predation is either counterintuitive or inconsistent.
Therefore, it is unclear whether a creature has the right to be saved from predation on its behalf. Therefore, it would not be wrong for moral agents not to help a stranger in need. It is entirely up to moral agents whether they want to help in such cases.
That is, if I have a special duty to my child, but my child does not have a right to such assistance, then it is unclear what force my special duty has. Would a statement of special duties and non-natural rights mean that wild animals have a non-natural right to be saved from predators. The first objection to Palmer's account is that we have reason to believe that wild animals are causally entangled with moral agents.
So far I have found that wild predatory animals may have a right to protection from predators. To demonstrate that it is likely that wild predatory animals sometimes have a right to rescue from predators, I assumed that the aid and harm burdens on the predator are negligible. This means that whenever we have to choose between the life of an innocent threat or the life of a victim, the victim has no concrete right to help and we have no rights-based reason to save him. 211.
This illustrates that it cannot be correct to say that we should simply do what is less burdensome in all cases where intervention causes serious harm to the predator. I argued that animal rights can be recognized and that sometimes wild animals have a right to escape from predators.
A Duty to Prevent Predation in Practice
Now it's unclear whether interventions in predation would meet each of the three conditions for us to have a moral obligation to help wild animals. But what do we owe wildlife in case of predation we could have prevented. In Section 3.1, I will argue that we have a contingent obligation to intervene on a large scale against predation.
It may be that the more we understand ecosystems, the more we discover how difficult it is to intervene safely and thus not have the obligation to manipulate nature en masse. One might reply that while it is true that not all humans are willing to intervene in nature on a large scale for the sake of animals, the proper implication is not to stop research on safe interventions in the interest of wildlife , but that we need to have benevolent intentions when we intervene in nature. While it is important to understand that there will certainly be massive suffering in the wild if we do nothing, there is also the possibility that no large-scale intervention will significantly change this.
Furthermore, it is absurd to suggest that we should intervene in predation, even when there is a 99% chance of very harmful consequences, just because this is less likely than certainly allowing wild animals to suffer. It is crucial to specify when a one-time predation intervention satisfies condition two, which was that an intervention is not disproportionately demanding on those who intervene. Nevertheless, it is plausible to distinguish between the predator's rights violation and the predator's.
So it is unlikely that we will have many people engaging in single predator interventions. Nor did the objections detract from my position that, while we do not yet have an obligation to intervene on a large scale in nature, we are required to intervene on a small scale in nature. This chapter began with a summary of three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for an obligation to intervene in predation: 1) that it is possible, 2) that it is feasible and not unjustifiable, and 3) that it is probable to improve the suffering of animals.
I have argued that we have a duty to prevent predation in nature in some circumstances. It is therefore unclear why significant outside help is not also appropriate in nature, even if the wild community is considered a sovereign state. Rather, given that we have weak causal entanglements with wild animals and that it is possible for wild animals to cope with the threat.
We should prevent predation once if we can intervene easily and the predator is minimally harmed by it. Law Theory and Animal Rights.” In The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, edited by Tom L.
