User:Sir Paul/Wild animal suffering

Wild-animal suffering is the suffering experienced by nonhuman animals in nature. Wild-animal suffering has historically been discussed in the context of philosophy of religion as an instance of the problem of evil. More recently, a number of academics have considered the issue from a secular standpoint as a general moral problem that we might be able to take action towards preventing.

The moral basis for interventions aimed at reducing wild animal suffering can be rights-based or welfare-based. From a rights-based perspective, if animals have a moral right to life or bodily integrity, intervention may be required to prevent such rights from being violated by other animals. From a welfare-based perspective, a requirement to intervene may arise insofar as it is possible to prevent some of the suffering experienced by wild animals without causing even more suffering. Advocates of intervention in nature argue that nonintervention is inconsistent with either of these approaches. Some proposed interventions include removing predators from wild areas, refraining from reintroducing predators, providing medical care to sick or injured animals, and rescuing wild animals from natural disasters.

Arguments for intervention
Philosopher Peter Singer has argued that intervention in nature would be justified if one could be reasonably confident that this would greatly reduce wild animal suffering and death in the long run. In practice, however, Singer cautions against interfering with ecosystems because he fears that doing so would cause more harm than good. Other authors dispute Singer's empirical claim about the likely consequences of intervening in the natural world, and argue that some types of intervention can be expected to produce good consequences overall. Thus, economist Tyler Cowen cites examples of animal species whose extinction is not generally regarded as having been on balance bad for the world. Cowen also notes that, insofar as humans are already intervening in nature, the relevant practical question is not whether we should intervene at all, but what particular forms of intervention we should favor. Along similar lines, moral philosopher Jeff McMahan argues that, since humans "are already causing massive, precipitate changes in the natural world," we should favor those changes that would promote the survival "of herbivorous rather than carnivorous species."

Potential conflict between animal rights and environmentalism
It has been argued that the common environmentalist goal of preserving the natural order is not in line with the goal of looking after the welfare of sentient animals. It has been further argued that they conflict in different cases. Examples include environmentalists supporting hunting invasive species for population control while animal rights advocates oppose it; animal rights advocates arguing for the extinction or reengineering of carnivores or r strategist species while deep ecologists defend their right to be and flourish as they are; animal rights advocates defending the reduction of wildlife areas or arguing against their expansion out of concern that most animal suffering takes place in them while environmentalists want to safeguard and expand the wild.

The amount of suffering in nature
In "Bambi or Bessie: Are Wild Animals Happier?" Christie Wilcox argues that wild animals do not appear to be happier than domestic animals because wild animals have been found to have greater levels of cortisol and to have elevated stress responses relative to domestic animals; furthermore, they do not have some of their needs provided for them like domestic animals.

Others have argued that because of the prevalence of the r-selected animals in the wild, for the majority of wild animals the average life would be very short and so would have more suffering than happiness in it because a painful death would outweigh short-lived moments of happiness in their lives.

Ecology as intrinsically valuable
Holmes Rolston III argues that only unnatural animal suffering is a morally bad thing and that humans do not have a duty to intervene in natural cases. He celebrates carnivores in nature because of the significant ecological role they play. Others have argued that the reason that humans have a duty to protect other humans from predation is because humans are part of the cultural world rather than the natural world and so different rules apply to them in these situations. Others argue that prey animals are fulfilling their natural function and so they are flourishing when they are preyed upon or otherwise die to allow natural selection to work.

The practicality of intervening in nature
Another common objection to intervening in nature is that it would be impractical either because of the amount of work involved or because we could not be sure that we were improving the lives of animals on balance due to the complexity of ecosystems. A reply to this is that there are already many cases in which we intervene in nature for other reasons such as for human interest in nature and environmental preservation as something valuable in their own rights.

Aaron Simmons argues that we should not intervene to save animals in nature because doing so would result in unintended consequences such as damaging the ecosystem, interfering with human projects, or resulting more animal deaths overall.

Peter Vallentyne suggests that, while humans should not eliminate predators in nature, they can intervene to help prey in more limited ways. In the same way that we help humans in need when the cost to us is small, we might help some wild animals at least in limited circumstances.

Wild animal suffering as a reductio ad absurdum
That people would also be obliged to intervene in nature has been used as a reductio ad absurdum against the position that animals have rights. This is because, if animals such as prey animals did have rights, people would be obliged to intervene in nature to protect them, but this is claimed to be absurd. An objection to this argument is that people do not see intervening in the natural world to save other people from predation as absurd and so this could be seen to involve treating non-human animals differently in this situation without justification.

Justifying meat-eating
The fact that other animals in the natural world eat meat is a common argument that eating meat must be morally permissible. One response is that other animals are not aware of what they are doing and so are not culpable for eating meat like humans would be. Others claim that, in fact, predation and other natural events are a bad thing like meat eating is. People may also cite other cases of "natural" primate behaviors like homicide, rape, and gang violence that we nonetheless regard as morally unacceptable.