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katz_2024_takingnaturalharmsseriouslyincompassionateconservation
Journal article

Taking natural harms seriously in compassionate conservation

DOKPE

  • 2024
Published in:
  • Biological Conservation. - USA : Elsevier BV. - 2024, vol. 299, no. art. 110791, p. 1-9
Compassionate conservation
Compassion
Respect
Wild animal suffering
Autonomy
Virtue ethics
English Compassionate conservation is an ethical framework proposed to instill greater compassion for individual animals in conservation science and practice. In addition to highlighting compassion as a virtue, compassionate conservationists propose four ethical principles (first do no harm, individuals matter, inclusivity, and peaceful coexistence) to capture what it means to act compassionately in conservation. In this paper I argue for a revision of this framework. I begin by showing how compassionate conservationists also implicitly promote the virtue of respect, which better accounts for the principles individuals matter and inclusivity, yet entails a further principle: respect for autonomy. I further suggest that, to reflect genuine compassion for wild animals, the principles first, do no harm and peaceful coexistence should be replaced by empathy, understanding, and minimize harm. In the second half of the paper, I discuss the implications of this revised framework. I argue that, due to the prevalence of suffering even in well-conserved ecosystems, compassion and respect motivate a more active management of natural environments in order to reduce the harms (natural and anthropogenic) that wild animals face. This reveals a greater need for discussions on how to balance the flourishing of wild animals against the preservation of biodiversity, as well as a need to identify new approaches to conservation which better promote both ends.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences et de médecine
Department
Département de Géosciences
Language
  • English
Classification
Ecology and biodeversity
License
CC BY
Open access status
hybrid
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/329494
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