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    Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation
    Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation
    Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation
    Ebook732 pages10 hours

    Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation

    By Marc Bekoff

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    About this ebook

    For far too long humans have been ignoring nature. As the most dominant, overproducing, overconsuming, big-brained, big-footed, arrogant, and invasive species ever known, we are wrecking the planet at an unprecedented rate. And while science is important to our understanding of the impact we have on our environment, it alone does not hold the answers to the current crisis, nor does it get people to act. In Ignoring Nature No More, Marc Bekoff and a host of renowned contributors argue that we need a new mind-set about nature, one that centers on empathy, compassion, and being proactive.            
    This collection of diverse essays is the first book devoted to compassionate conservation, a growing global movement that translates discussions and concerns about the well-being of individuals, species, populations, and ecosystems into action. Written by leading scholars in a host of disciplines, including biology, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, political science, and philosophy, as well as by locals doing fieldwork in their own countries, the essays combine the most creative aspects of the current science of animal conservation with analyses of important psychological and sociocultural issues that encourage or vex stewardship. The contributors tackle topics including the costs and benefits of conservation, behavioral biology, media coverage of animal welfare, conservation psychology, and scales of conservation from the local to the global. Taken together, the essays make a strong case for why we must replace our habits of domination and exploitation with compassionate conservation if we are to make the world a better place for nonhuman and human animals alike.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateJun 1, 2013
    ISBN9780226925363
    Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation

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      Ignoring Nature No More - Marc Bekoff

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      PART ONE

      ETHICS, CONSERVATION, AND ANIMAL PROTECTION

      TRYING TO MAKE DIFFICULT DECISIONS EASIER

      The essays in this part are concerned with various topics that fall under the general category of ethics, what are the right and wrong things to do in a given situation. Of course, given the difficult decisions we have to make involving diverse animals living in different habitats in a wide variety of cultures, there has to be some flexibility. However, without a firm and consistent framework of general guiding principles that would obtain in the best of all possible worlds (which this isn’t), it’s impossible to make the difficult decisions with which we’re faced daily. Modifying or overriding these principles in certain circumstances, for example, first do no harm, would require strong arguments for why this should be done. I often wish I didn’t have to make some of the choices that need to be made, but they won’t go away if they’re ignored. For better or worse we are the surrogate decision makers for other individual animals and for a wide variety of species and ecosystems, and given who we are, we can do just about anything we want. The essays in this section provide the foundation for much of what follows later in this collection.

      John Vucetich and Michael Nelson set the stage for much-needed, wide-ranging discussions concerning ethical foundations of conservation. They note that life and nature manifest themselves in different ways, as individual creatures, populations, and ecosystems. Concerns for populations and ecosystems are the focus of conservation, and concerns for individual creatures are the focus of animal welfare ethics. Both are important, but each has a tendency to ignore the other. Their chapter is an attempt to develop an ethic that transcends both perspectives. Further discussion of these issues can be found in Aitken (2004), Bekoff (2006, 2010), and Fraser (2010).

      Vucetich and Nelson go on to argue that the ethical foundation of conservation is a shambles and that we can’t even provide good answers to the most important unanswered questions in conservation—namely, (1) What is population viability and ecosystem health? (2) How does conservation relate to and sometimes conflict with other legitimate values in life, such as social justice, human liberty, and concern for the welfare of individual nonhuman animals? How should we resolve such conflicts? (3) Do populations and ecosystems have direct moral considerations? These challenging questions have direct on-the-ground consequences for conservation, and the authors argue that we need ethical consensus, not individual decisions, on the matters at hand. These questions are also philosophical or ethical in nature, not purely scientific. Vucetich and Nelson also show the importance of empathy, not only for sentient animals but also with nonsentient beings and ecological collectives. They show how important education is, a theme echoed in many other essays in this collection. Conservation science and humane education need to generate a sense of wonder for nature rather than emphasize prediction and control and must emphasize the ways in which nature is morally relevant.

      Paul Waldau also emphasizes the importance of education and empathy and notes that the animal protection and conservation movements are really social movements and that members of each will have to work together in the future if we’re to make meaningful progress. He writes, Conservation and animal protection both call upon fundamental human abilities to recognize realities of other living beings. Waldau draws a powerful and hopeful conclusion: "Conservation insights are also driven by our great need to connect to the meaning of life. The two movements discussed in this chapter can, when working together, offer a very special hope—namely, that we now live in a time in which we can name war, genocide, habitat destruction, countless unnecessary murders of living beings, and global climate change as our heritage and our predicament, but also as problems we can choose to face squarely. In a world in which our political systems have slipped into an appalling lack of civility, and religious traditions struggle to gain the spiritual character to promote peace rather than division, the prospect of conservation’s protective, constructive, healing insights being linked to the animal movement’s power to instill and nurture individuals’ ethical character is a soothing one. This can happen if the active citizens in each of these movements will choose to work together. This is one choice we can make as a way to celebrate the world we want to live in and leave for our children." Education and empathy can lead to large and significant positive changes in how we treat other animals and the habitats in which they reside. We are obliged to do this for future generations who will have to live with our decisions about who lives and who

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