Do we have a duty to prevent predation in the wild?

Ashwin, Michelle

Do we have a duty to prevent predation in the wild?

Master Thesis

2023

Abstract

The animal ethics literature has focused a great deal on the harms that culpable moral agents cause animals, and our duties to prevent this. What is less clear is whether there is a duty to stop nonhuman animals from harming other creatures, considering that they lack moral agency. In this dissertation, I investigate whether we ought to prevent the harm of wild predation. Firstly, I consider two arguments against interfering with the wild. Ecological holists claim that the natural world has ultimate value. They argue against all interventions in predation which threaten to undermine the integrity of nature. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka argue that we should refrain from interfering with predatory cycles out of respect for wild animal communities' sovereignty and a preference to remain independent from humans. I reject both views, by arguing that their reasons for thinking that we do not have a duty to intervene in predation on a large scale are flawed. Secondly, I argue that animals possess basic moral rights and that it is reasonable for them to have a right to be rescued from predation under some circumstances. If intervening is easy and it will not severely injure or kill the predator, the prey creature has a right to be rescued. Otherwise, an intervention in predation is required if and only if three practical conditions are met: 1) the intervention is possible, 2) the burden of intervening is reasonable and feasible, and 3) the intervention does not create as much or more suffering than it aims to avoid. I argue that largescale interventions cannot meet condition 3 insofar as we lack knowledge about how to interfere with predation cycles without devastating ecological consequences. The question of a moral requirement to intervene once-off will depend on whether the prey-victim had her rights violated and on the extent of our morally relevant relationship with the prey-victim. These factors determine whether the intervention meets condition 2. Therefore, the question of a duty to intervene once-off must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Keywords

philosophy

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