The Internet sometimes explodes with horror at disturbing images of wildlife: deer with monstrous black bubbles all over the face and body, sore squirrels, rabbits with horns.
As a society, we tend to have romantic notions about life in nature. We imagine these rabbits cuddling their babies, these squirrels chewing nuts, and these deer frolicking through sunlit meadows. However, the trend of Frankenstein creatures afflicted with various illnesses is steadily peeling away this idyllic veneer, revealing the harsher realities that underpin the natural world. And we should do something about it.
First, consider that wild animals (the many trillion Of them, they are not that different from other animals we care about, like dogs and cats, or even from us. They love. they build complexes social structures. They have emotions. And most importantly, they also experience suffering.
Many wild animals are suffering because of us. Us destroy their habitatsThey are sterilized and killed by our pollutionand sometimes we hunt them like trophies. The suffering created by humans is especially galling.
But even in the absence of human impact, wild animals continue to experience a a lot of pain. They die of hunger and thirst. They become infected by parasites and diseases. they are destroyed by other animals. Some of us have believed in the naturalistic fallacy that interfering with nature is wrong. But suffering is suffering wherever it occurs, and we should do something about it when we can. If we have the opportunity to rescue an injured or sick animal, why not do it? If we can alleviate the suffering of a being, shouldn't we do it?
If we accept that we have an obligation to help wild animals, where should we start? Of course, if we have an obvious opportunity to help an animal, such as a bird with a broken wing, we should intervene and perhaps take it to a wildlife rescue center, if there is one nearby. We can use fewer toxic products and reduce our overall waste to minimize harmful pollution, keep fresh water out on hot summer days, reduce our carbon footprint to prevent induced climate change. fires, build shelter for wildlife like bats and bees, and more. Even something as simple as cleaning bird feeders can help reduce disease rates in wild animals.
And when we interfere with nature in ways that affect wild animals, we must do so with compassion. For example, in my hometown of Staten Island, in an effort to combat deer overpopulation (due to their negative impact on humans), officials implemented a mass vasectomy program, instead of sacrifices. and so? job. Because I wouldn't do it Do we opt for a strategy that does not force us to kill hundreds of innocent animals?
But nature is indifferent to suffering, and even if we do these valuable things, billions of people will continue to suffer because the scale of the problem is so large, literally all over the world. It is worth looking at the high-level changes we can make to reduce animal suffering. Perhaps we can invest in the development and dissemination of cell cultured meat (meat made from cells rather than slaughtered animals) to reduce the amount of predation in the wild. Gene drive technology could make wildlife less likely to spread diseases like the one that affects rabbits, or malaria. More research is needed to understand the world around us and our effect on it, but the most ethical thing to do is to work to help wild animals systemically.
The Franken animals going viral online may have caught our attention because they look like something from hell, but their story is a reminder that wild animal suffering is real and everywhere. These diseases are just a few of the countless causes of pain in the lives of billions of sentient beings, many of which we could help alleviate if we so chose. Helping wild animals is not just a moral opportunity, it is a responsibility, and it starts with seeing their suffering as something we can (and should) address.
Brian Kateman is co-founder of the Reducetarian Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the consumption of animal products. His latest book and documentary is “Meat with me halfway.”
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Ideas expressed in the piece.
- Wild animals experience genuine suffering comparable to that of domesticated animals and humans, including through hunger, disease, parasitism, and predation, and society romanticizes wildlife in ways that obscure these harsh realities.[1][2]
- Humans have a moral obligation to address the suffering of wild animals whenever possible, since suffering is morally significant regardless of whether it occurs naturally or is the result of human action.[2]
- Direct intervention in individual cases, such as rescuing injured animals or providing fresh water during heat waves, is warranted, alongside broader systemic approaches such as reducing pollution and carbon emissions.[2]
- Humane wildlife management strategies should be prioritized over lethal approaches when addressing human-wildlife conflicts, as demonstrated by vasectomy programs that manage overpopulation without mass culling.[2]
- Large-scale technological solutions, including cell-cultured meat to reduce predation and gene drive technology to control disease transmission, must be sought and investigated to systematically reduce the suffering of wild animals on a large scale.[2]
- The naturalistic fallacy (the belief that natural processes should never be interfered with) is fundamentally flawed when compared to the moral imperative to alleviate suffering.[2]
Different points of view on the topic.
The search results provided do not contain explicit opposing views to the author's argument about the moral duty to intervene in the suffering of wild animals. Available sources focus primarily on the author's work on reducing farm animal consumption through reductionarianism and advocating for factory farms.[1][3][4]rather than perspectives that directly challenge the premise that humans should work to alleviate the suffering of wild animals through technological or ecological interventions.
