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phd_katzt.pdf
Doctoral thesis

The ethical implications of wild animal suffering for conservation and wildlife management

DOKPE

  • Fribourg (Switzerland) : Université de Fribourg, 2025

1 ressource en ligne (vi, 116 pages) ; 1 fichier pdf

PhD: Université de Fribourg (Suisse), 2025

Wild animal suffering
Wildlife management
Compassionate conservation
Principlism
Welfare consequentialism
Precaution
Intervention
Pragmatism
Speciesism
Sentience
English This dissertation investigates how wildlife managers should respond to the suffering of wild animals. According to good estimates, most sentient beings living today are wild animals, and most of them die before reaching adulthood, having spent their short lives struggling to survive. Some ethicists argue this creates an obligation to intervene in natural ecosystems, but wildlife managers face three sources of uncertainty: whether we have a duty to mitigate wild animal suffering even in theory; whether interventions are worth pursuing given the great uncertainties involved; and how that concern can be balanced against conservation values.The dissertation follows a pragmatist methodology, drawing on different ethical frameworks for their strengths in answering different questions. Part one uses Principlism to argue that the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice capture the values of scholars with different theoretical dispositions, and that the most plausible specification supports a duty to mitigate wild animal suffering, albeit with precaution.Part two adopts a welfare-consequentialist lens to hone in on the risks of intervention. The severity of suffering in nature creates urgency, but intervention risks irreversible changes that close off future ways to improve wild animal welfare. This reaffirms the need for precaution, while pointing to types of intervention that promise a particularly low risk/benefit ratio.Part three turns to Compassionate Conservation. By pointing out internal inconsistencies, it shows that compassionate conservationists must also seek to mitigate wild animal suffering, and that management strategies can pursue both aims.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences et de médecine
Department
Département des Géosciences
Language
  • English
Classification
Earth sciences
Notes
  • Bibliographie
License
CC BY
Open access status
diamond
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/335672
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