Compassionate conservation, where to from here?

Abstract

The field of conservation, at its core, is based on a number of ethics (Nash, 1967) which include appreciating nature (Thoreau, 1854; Whitman, 1855), understanding there is a need to protect it (Muir, 1890), and a belief that land should be shared between humans and wilderness (Leopold, 1949). Therefore, contemporary practitioners of conservation are, in a sense, emissaries of a society that values protecting nature. Modern conservation biology has merged the intrinsic value of appreciating nature together with an understanding that, in the modern age ecosystems, habitats and wildlife populations need to be managed and protected from rapid changes primarily caused by human activity. In particular, invasion biology asserts that native ecosystems and the species that comprise them need to be protected from species/populations established recently by humans (Soulé, 1987), and that the collective (e.g. a species or population) is always more important than the individuals themselves. The need to protect ecosystems from change, safeguard certain wildlife species from harm by other species, and manage human-wildlife conflicts, coupled with a disregard for the individual wild animal, has given rise to conservation management practices that cause significant harm, in the form of death and pain, to wildlife by humans (Bekoff, 2013; Dubois et al., 2017). For example, nonnative wildlife are routinely shot and poisoned to dilute their numbers and the supposed impact on native wildlife and ecosystems; emergent (a positive term for the negative term “irruptive”) species are killed to lessen their impact on other wildlife; human-wildlife conflict in agricultural and urban contexts is usually resolved by killing wildlife; and, trophy hunting is supported by many conservationists as sustainable conservation. Whilst the aim is usually the removal of the offending wildlife, the methods used often cause much suffering in the form of acute stress and injury (Dubois et al., 2017). For example kangaroos in Australia, and boars and deer around the world are culled and often miss shot to die a slow and painful death. Millions of foxes and dingoes in Australia, and possums in New Zealand, are poisoned by 1080 every year causing severe pain before death. Coyotes and wolves are leg trapped in the US to suffer an inevitably painful death. Surviving young of all animals often die of dehydration, starvation and exposure. These are just a few examples that show the staggering extent of harm to wildlife in the name of conservation and conservation management. In the cases in which conservation practices cause harm to wildlife, there is a growing conflict between those who wish to protect nature and those who believe in the emerging ethic of animal protection (Bruskotter et al., 2017; van Eeden et al., 2017). Interestingly, this growing ethic of animal protection can often be seen expressed in a population’s dietary choices. In Israel, for example, an estimated 12–15 % of the population are now vegetarian or vegan (Zieve, 2018), and dramatically increasing vegan/ vegetarian populations are also found in other countries (Wikipedia, 2018). In addition to diet, a recent US study (Bruskotter et al., 2017) found that the animal protection ethic, in relation to wildlife, is broadly accepted in society: