‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’: Wild animals deserve rights, too
A large part of animal advocacy centers around animals raised for human consumption. ‘Animal lovers’, ranging from vegans to pet-lovers, rarely advocate or think much about wild animals. Wild animals that end up in zoos or sanctuaries occasionally capture public interest for brief periods, but the interest is often fleeting. This is indefensible. Wild animals deserve our attention and respect, for the same reasons that we should care about any creature: they are sentient, with recognizable social behaviors and emotions, and just like humans their lives have intrinsic value. But they should not be ignored: our ideology and laws dictate the terms of their existence, and the interests that oversee their homes cause immense suffering. Even though most of our lives do not intersect with those of wild animals, we have a moral and practical interest in letting them live out their lives without interference.
CURRENT AFFAIRS: Last May, a jaw-dropping act of cruelty took place in Maine’s Muscongus Bay, a popular tourist area. Three coyotes were killed and strung from a buoy, their gruesome and pointless deaths treated as a simple Coast Guard maintenance issue. Nobody broke any laws (it is perfectly legal to shoot a coyote and leave her to rot), so nobody was held accountable. The same year, the Animal Legal Defense Fund ranked Maine third best in the country in animal protection laws.
As advocates celebrate rising public awareness of animal suffering, wild animals—non-domesticated animals that live in nature and depend on themselves to survive—are rarely part of the conversation. But they should not be ignored: our ideology and laws dictate the terms of their existence, and the interests that oversee their homes cause immense suffering. Even though most of our lives do not intersect with those of wild animals, we have a moral and practical interest in letting them live out their lives without interference.
A large part of animal advocacy centers around animals raised for human consumption. This focus persists as the U.S. continues to implement practices considered barbaric elsewhere, like in Europe, where hens are allotted more space, cattle cannot be kept inside year-round, and other animal welfare laws provide somewhat greater protections. Pets like dogs and cats also receive a good deal of public attention… Wild animals that end up in zoos or sanctuaries occasionally capture public interest for brief periods, but the interest is often fleeting…
‘Animal lovers,’… ranging from vegans (who at roughly one percent of the American population, are generally considered hard-core activists) to pet-lovers (often the more accessible type), rarely… advocate or think much about wild animals… This is indefensible. Wild animals deserve our attention and respect, for the same reasons that we should care about any creature: they are sentient, with recognizable social behaviors and emotions, and just like humans their lives have intrinsic value. But wild animals are also unique, simply by virtue of existing outside of the sphere of human stewardship. They live their lives mostly out of our sight, and we have no hands-on role in their breeding or care…
The assumption that wild animals somehow benefit from human oversight underpins the way most wild lands are managed in the United States… Only 13 percent of the entire country’s landmass is formally protected in any manner. But protected doesn’t mean untouched: hunting is permitted in 436 of the 573 total of National Wildlife Refuges. Instead of protection as such, the prevailing model of conservation presumes that our intervention is necessary for the wellbeing of wild animals, which for some reason simply cannot manage on their own…
The laws put into place by hunters and their allies govern most human relations to wild animals. Control and domination permeate this relationship, reflecting the roots of conservation in white supremacy and the prejudicial arrogance that prioritizes one group over others. Supported by pseudoscientific reasoning that does not account for any costs to non-human animals, and backed by mainstream nonprofits with near-universal buy-in, hunters and their allies have designed a system that delivers countless variations of mass slaughter. In all instances, human arrogance and ignorance toward other species is on full display, with those species paying the price…
The prevailing model of conservation has failed all but a few. In alignment with our broader economic and political system, its disregard for nonhuman lives, for less privileged human populations, and for future generations has brought about a mass extinction event that threatens all life on Earth. But there is an alternative: outside of mainstream conservation and wildlife management, emerging paradigms challenge mainstream conservation and try to correct for its failures.
Alternatives tend to arise from a simple intuition that is absent from mainstream conservation: that wild animals are not populations to be managed for our benefit, but are individuals who value their own lives.These individuals have more of a claim to life and to freedom from harm than humans have claim to kill them.
“Just preservation” stands out as the framework most aligned with the egalitarian worldview cultivated by left politics. This model emphasizes respect and dignity for other species and attention to the interrelationships between them, rather than the modes through which humans might profit from them. Just preservation advocates for ethical impartiality between species, such that we do not treat species on the basis of any positive preference or negative prejudice. It proposes a multi-species society with equitable distribution of resources and an acknowledgement of responsibilities to other species, as well as explicit consideration for the future of all species. MICHAEL BURROWS
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