When we talk about the recovery of wolves, what do we really mean? By reading the literature and listening to people talk, I hear several distinct meanings. You may have heard others as well.
To my ear, the first meaning has to do with conservation, by which is meant the government regulating whether and how people hunt, trap and kill wolves. The background idea here is that wolves are an agricultural crop to be culled, or a pest to be exterminated. Natural recolonization is the second meaning. Here wolves recolonize an area of their former range by way of out-migration from the places they already inhabit. The idea here is that by successfully establishing themselves in new habitats, wolves demonstrate their fitness to inhabit those landscapes, and side-step political controversies over human intervention. Finally, there is restoration, a process where humans intervene to help a population of wolves take root and grow. This usually involves captive breeding, capture and release. In restoration the idea is to help wolves over geographic hurdles so they can return to an area that they would recolonize if human development were not in the way.
Opponents of wolves often talk in public of their commitment to wolf recovery, by which they really mean ‘conserving’ the least number of wolves in the smallest possible area for the shortest period of time. Proponents of wolf recovery tend to focus on the recolonization or restoration of wolves in areas outside their current haunts. Even so, both opponents and proponents often agree to restrict wolves within the borders of predefined recovery zones. These are not natural borders based on ecological criteria, but barriers to recovery imposed by partisan politics.
You can distinguish the various meanings of recovery by listening for the unarticulated moral sensibilities behind what advocates, scientists, bureaucrats and politicians are saying. If their sensibilities are hostile to wolves, then whatever the rhetoric, you can bet their idea of recovery has less to do with expanding the range of wolves, than it does with getting these canids within the range of a gun. If their ideas are benign, they often favour one kind of recovery over another depending on two factors - the prospects for recolonization and the degree of political opposition to wolves.
For instance, there are many places in North America where wolves would thrive. Geographic barriers and human depredation, however, prevent wolves from recolonizing on their own. Examples include the northern forests of New York and New England, and the Grand Canyon ecoregion in the southwest. Advocates, ethicists and scientists have proposed restoring wolves in these places. A vocal minority of residents, special interests and government officials have stymied such efforts.
Some of this opposition is rooted in a direct antipathy to wolves. The local bumper sticker ‘ Wolves - Government-Sponsored Terrorists’ encapsulates this view rather nicely. Other elements of the opposition are evasive. Special interests and politicians often ’support’ recolonization but not restoration. This allows them to have their cake and eat it too. They can speak as if they support recovery, but in practice they undermine it.
There is sometimes a strange moral argument made by the opposition as well. It runs something like this. Extinction for natural reasons has always occurred throughout history. Humanity is simply another force of local or complete extinction. If wolves cannot survive in human-dominated landscapes by adapting their way of life to ours, then extinction is the natural result. We are under no moral obligation to help wolves, and further, it might even be immoral to help an evolutionarily ‘unfit’ species continue to survive.
This argument has two basic flaws. It assumes that humans are a ‘natural’ force of extinction, and fails to distinguish natural from anthropogenic sources of environmental change. Second, it justifies a moral claim with an uncritical appeal to humanity as a natural force of extinction. It is not an argument that holds water in the sense of corresponding to the facts, or making a reasoned claim. In this sense, it is really a set of ad hoc justifications for refusing to share the landscape with wolves.
Were we all to agree that recovery is a good idea in general, there are still a host of other questions to answer. Should we have wolves in our area? If so, where? Do wolves belong only in the most remote corners of a wilderness, or over that hill about half an hour’s walk from here? Should wolves be kept away from people, pets and farm animals? Or should we adapt to the presence of wolves in our everyday lives? How might the predation of wolves alter the landscape or impact local economies? Who will resolve the run of the mill conflicts between humans and wolves?
To answer these and other practical questions, we must address the ethical reasons, ecological impact and social aspects of wolf recovery. Others have discussed the ecological and social dimensions at some length. What they have to say generally boils down to a discussion of habitat suitability and human tolerance.
I want to address the ethical reasons by sharing five ideas to help guide our thinking. You can use these ideas to ferret out the moral assumptions behind the rhetoric of wolf recovery. You can also use them to evaluate whether current or proposed policies or management practices are justified. As you come across ethically problematic issues in wolf recovery, please do share them with us. If you have a question or concern, you can bet that someone else has something similar as well. And when we share these experience and thoughts, we deepen our collective understanding.
1. Ethics can help us heal our troubled world and our troubles with wolves.
Make no mistake about it, ours is a troubled world. A partial list of our troubles includes war, poverty, injustice, the neglect of children, and the abuse of animals. Globalization makes these problems increasingly complex. Terrorism - especially the prospect of bioterrorism - adds yet another illness to burden our social and environmental health. What some have called the ‘war against wolves’ is one symptom of this troubled world. What are we to do about all this?
One answer is to look to our deepest moral values, which is to say, the ethics that guide our individual and collective lives. In the words of Socrates, ethics envisions ‘how we ought to live’. Put into practice, ethics outlines moral principles to guide our thought and action. When used properly, ethics can help improve the well-being of ourselves and others - human and non-human. By clarifying what our world ought to be like, ethics helps us make better personal and social decisions, distinguish better from worse interpretations and actions, and reveal the values that are at stake — or should be at stake — in debates over nature and society, animals and people, wolves and humanity.
Using ethics to help us make better policy choices is at the heart of wolf recovery. The political hackles that talk of wolf recovery can raise are symptoms of a moral conflict over whether or not to coexist with large predators. And this is related to our coexistence with the natural world, and whether we see ourselves apart from or part of a wider fellowship of life.
This moral conflict is akin to humanity’s struggle for human rights and justice. Our societies have and continue to struggle with questions of race, class, gender and ethnicity in the political and social spheres. While we have made much progress, there remains much to be done. Yet the basic idea that there are morally right and wrong ways in which to treat people and their communities is beyond dispute. So too, we are struggling with questions of species, and what moral responsibilities we owe the non-human world.
The natural and social sciences cannot answer these questions for us, for moral conflicts cannot be understood or solved by gathering empirical data, or developing a better quantitative model, or practicing an innovative management technique. To solve our moral conflicts we need to face them for what they are - differences over ethical values and worldviews. Only then can we reveal the values at stake, and sort out better from worse ideas about wolf recovery.
2. Wolves have moral value.
When people say wolves have moral value, what does this mean? Generally it means that wolves have intrinsic value in and of themselves, and should have moral standing in our community. This does not mean that wolves are human beings. Rather it emphasizes that both people and wolves are creatures worthy of care and respect. We can see how this thinking works by using an analogy between people and wolves.
Human beings are intelligent and social creatures - we think, we feel, we relate. We are aware of ourselves, of others and our environment. This kind of awareness is why we are termed Homo sapiens, literally the ‘wise earthly ones’. Because of our self-awareness, we have an individual worth independent of the use anyone has for us. Ethicists term this ‘intrinsic value’. Intrinsic value is the core reason why we should treat people with care and respect. It is also why love and friendship and democracy and justice are so important. They are ethical principles, dispositions and practices that help us ‘do right’ by individuals and communities. Because of our intrinsic value, humans are therefore part of a moral community.
Wolves are intelligent and social creatures too. Like us, they think, feel and relate. Not in exactly the same manner as we, but in a way appropriate to their kind. So like human beings, wolves have a well-being of their own to care about. Such ideas about the moral value of wolves are part of a larger sensibility that animals are not simply property. Wolves and other animals have their own intrinsic value, quite apart from the instrumental purposes that humans may have for them. This does not mean that we treat people and wolves in the same way. For instance, wolves have no political right to vote - nor should they: they are not the kinds of creatures who can do so. But what it does mean is that we ought to take the welfare of wolves into account whether in the outback or in our backyard. Wolves are thus part of the moral community along with human beings.
3. Wolf management is an ethical concern.
If wolves have moral value, then our choices in wolf management are moral decisions.
Biologists have noted time and again that the recovery of wolves is not so much an ecological as it is a social issue. We have only to keep the human killers of wolves at bay, and wolves will thrive wherever there is sufficient prey and habitat. This is an insightful point. It becomes more powerful when we recall how ethical norms condition our willingness to live with wolves.
The vilification of wolves in Europe and North America are cases in point. Historically, anti-wolf sentiment took on the form of a moral argument against wolves. Wolves were considered villains, varmints and vermin. They were criminals preying on innocent victims like deer, cattle and sheep. They were the spawn of Satan - even Satan himself - despoiling the landscape. Today they are compared to terrorists threatening human communities. As a consequence of this reasoning, our societies killed wolves with a vengeance.
Over the last century, this caricature of wolves has been debunked. Ethicists have argued for the moral value of wolves. Scientists have demonstrated the importance of predation in the natural world. Environmentalists have mobilized broad public support for the conservation of biodiversity. These and other groups have upended the moral arguments against wolves.
In so doing, these groups have also cleared the way for a reevaluation of wolves. We are beginning to ask ethical questions that go beyond biological suitability or social carrying capacity. We are asking how we ‘ought’ to live with wolves, and what our responsibilities are to wolves themselves. Please do not miss the significance of this. The ethics of wolf recovery has been ignored in public deliberation for decades. This has impoverished our policy options regarding wolf recovery. Attending to the ethical questions promises a better approach to wolf recovery in Europe, North America and elsewhere.
4. A sound science requires a sound ethics.
In my travels and public speaking, I have said this time and again, but it bears repeating. A sound science requires a sound ethics.
When discussing predator management, we are likely to hear praises of ’sound science’. Sound science is supposed to be the evidence-based, theory-rich baseline for managing wolves. Yet as previously noted, humanity’s trouble with wolves is really a moral conflict.
Science can provide us important information about our ethical and social choices, but it cannot make those choices for us. So what we need is a sound ethics to complement the science of wolf recovery, and guide our policy choices. What would this ethic look like? To my mind, it must meet three criteria.
o A sound ethics must recognize the moral value of wolves.
o A sound ethics must highlight the moral significance of wildlife advocacy, management and science.
o A sound ethics must emphasize the practical value of ethics in the recovery of wolves.
Human action has always had a real and frequently tragic impact on the well-being wolves. Whether intentional or not, wolf management is always laden with ethical motivations and consequences. Paying attention to the criteria above will help us identify the moral assumptions at work in diverse visions and practices of wolf recovery.
My sense is that wildlife professionals are beginning to appreciate the moral dimensions of their work. I have talked with hundreds of students, advocates, scientists, government officials and the like about the ethics of wolf recovery. Most of them care deeply about the well-being of people, animals and the places they inhabit. It is this caring that forms the foundation for their moral sensibilities, and their longing to bring ethical criteria into their work.
What I find tragic is how graduate education and professional training often beat these sensibilities into a submission to some illusory ‘value-free’ science. Equally heartbreaking is that many individuals are forbidden to express these moral sensibilities by the agencies, corporations or non-profits for which they work. I hope it is obvious by now that this silence must be broken.
5. The recovery of wolves will help restore our relationship to nature.
Wolf recovery is important to the well-being of wolves. Arguably that is moral reason enough for our participation in robust recovery efforts. But it may also be important to us as a step in restoring our broken relationship with nature.
Just as our world is deeply troubled, our relationship to nature is broken. The scale of human-induced environmental problems is too massive to deny, e.g. global warming, deforestation, desertification, extinction, invasive species, over-population, over-consumption and pollution. Yet there is still time to acknowledge our responsibilities, space to restore the natural world, and a place for a nature-friendly culture. Wolves can help us in this regard.
Humanity has a special history and relationship with wolves. Despite the differences, Canis lupus and Homo sapiens readily communicate, so much so, that wolves were the first large mammal to coevolve with humans. Some prehistoric peoples modeled their societies after wolf packs, and some wolves were domesticated to become the dogs of today. Indeed, wolves and dogs have been so important to the development of human culture that some scholars joke about reclassifying humanity as Homo lupus! This relationship is amongst the best places to redefine our place in the natural world.
The recovery of wolves across the world would be a major step forward. In the first place, it would require that we cultivate a respect for the intrinsic value and well-being of wolves and their habitats. This will have obvious benefits for other animals and natural communities. In the second place, it would promote the ecological health of the landscape. Wolves are top carnivores that help maintain biodiversity and ecological function with respect to everything from forest ground cover, to the incidence of song birds, to the control of deer populations, to the spread of Lyme’s disease. In the third place, a broad recovery of wolves would be evidence of our moral health. If our societies can learn to live alongside wolves, we are one step closer to living in sympathy and sustainably with the rest of the natural world.
Conclusion
I have no doubt we will face hard choices about wolf recovery. While human interests should not trump the welfare of wolves, the needs of wolves do not automatically override the well-being of people. Remember that both people and wolves have moral value. There must be a dynamic synthesis of the two. This synthesis is best reached through win-win solutions that protect ethical, ecological and social values. Sometimes, however, we are faced with situations on the ground that require choosing the well-being of one over the other. These are the hard cases of ethics and policy. We should not deny they exist, nor should we overstate their importance.
If we want free-roaming wolves to survive this millennium, we will have to make better policy choices about ‘how we ought to live’ with predators and other wild animals. We will have to accept our moral responsibilities to a mixed community that includes both humanity and wolves. And if we proactively act with ethical concern for the wolves that can recolonize or be restored across the landscapes of this planet, we may even cultivate a culture that honours and celebrates people, animals and the rest of nature.
Cheers, Bill
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Bill Lynn is the founder and Senior Ethics Advisor of Practical Ethics (http://www.practicalethics.net/), and a professor at the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University (www.tufts.edu/vet/cfa).
Image: Tracy Brooks, 2003, Reflection.
William Lynn :: Mar.02.2008 ::
Environmental Studies, Ethics, Human-Animal Studies, Wolves ::
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