Applying wildlife welfare principles to individual animals

8. DUTY OF CARE FOR WILDLIFE SPECIES
8.1 Is our responsibility context dependent?
Much of the literature (and many of the principles) established thus far have been developed
for animals which are closely managed by humans such as production farm animals,
companion animals or laboratory animals. Before considering how we may assess and
respond to the welfare status of wildlife it is important to question to what extent our
responsibility may be in some sense context dependent (see also Ohl and Putman, 2013d).
There has been much debate in the more philosophical literature about human
responsibilities to animals and about the moral value of animal life. A significant part of this
literature recognizes animals as having moral status: that is, to be an entity (a being)
towards which we can have moral duties (Warren, 1997), acknowledging that animals that
fall under our responsibility are also part of our moral circle, and whether these animals
flourish is also our concern. In the past, perhaps, many philosophers, following a Kantian
approach, presumed that such moral status derived as a consequence of their relationship
with humans, as an extension of human-centred morality, but a significant number of
ethicists now concede that animals have some moral value that is independent of their use
by humans.
According to Regan (1983), animals are, like humans, subjects-of-a-life. They have
subjective experiences, can experience the quality of their lives, and enter into and maintain
relationships with others. Taylor (1986) argues that all organisms have ‘inherent worth’
because, as ‘teleological centres of life’, they have a good of their own, while Rollin (2011)
ascribes an intrinsic value to animals because “what happens to an entity matters to it even
if it does not matter to anyone or anything else. Because it is capable of valuing what
happens to it, either in a positive or negative way, such valuing is inherent in it.”
In effect, although the basis for the belief may differ, many western philosophies now accept
that all animals have moral status and that in consequence, and without exception, they
merit moral consideration. This broad acknowledgement of animals as having moral status,
however, appears not to result in one broadly shared view on how we should treat them.
This is clearly reflected in current legislative provisions for consideration of animals’ welfare
which are in general largely context-dependent, such that there may be a clear legal
distinction between responsibilities towards farm animals, lab animals, companion animals,
closely managed wildlife, and truly wild animals experiencing little management input (see
for example review by Vapnek and Chapman, 2010).
Partly as a reflection of that legal distinction, some authors (as, for example, Swart, 2005
and Swart & Keulartz, 2011) suggest a similar distinction in relation to context (kept and nonkept),
in terms of our responsibilities for animals and the way those responsibilities might be
discharged. If we wish to try to claim for a wider duty of care, we may argue that at least
within a European context, all animals (whatever their status as kept or non-kept) are to
some degree influenced by human activity – whether to a greater or lesser extent, and
whether deliberate or incidental. Closely managed animals in whatever context (farm
animals, laboratory animals, companion animals) have their whole environment controlled by
human agency; but even for free-ranging or apparently wild animals, their habitat and
movement patterns are affected by human land-use and land-management and many
populations are directly controlled by culling.
Thus even in terms of those philosophical traditions which base responsibilities for animals
on their relationship with humans, some duty of care might be expected. In practice however
such separate ‘justification’ is unnecessary if we accept the moral premise above that all
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