Consequences Matter: Compassion in Conservation Means Caring for Individuals, Populations and Species

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Acting to preserve biodiversity can involve harming individual animals. It has recently been argued that conventional practice has placed too much emphasis on the preservation of collective entities, such as populations and species, at the expense of suffering for individuals. At least some advocates of the ‘Compassionate Conservation’ movement find any deployment of lethal measures in the interests of conservation to be unacceptable. This shifts the balance of priorities too far. While conservationists have a duty to minimise harm, and to use non-lethal measures where feasible, there will be serious implications for conservation if this movement were to be widely influential. Furthermore, the ‘do-no-harm’ maxim the compassionate conservationists advocate does not always promote the welfare of individual animals. ABSTRACT: Human activity affecting the welfare of wild vertebrates, widely accepted to be sentient, and therefore deserving of moral concern, is widespread. A variety of motives lead to the killing of individual wild animals. These include to provide food, to protect stock and other human interests, and also for sport. The acceptability of such killing is widely believed to vary with the motive and method. Individual vertebrates are also killed by conservationists. Whether securing conservation goals is an adequate reason for such killing has recently been challenged. Conventional conservation practice has tended to prioritise ecological collectives, such as populations and species, when their interests conflict with those of individuals. Supporters of the ‘Compassionate Conservation’ movement argue both that conservationists have neglected animal welfare when such conflicts arise and that no killing for conservation is justified. We counter that conservationists increasingly seek to adhere to high standards of welfare, and that the extreme position advocated by some supporters of ‘Compassionate Conservation’, rooted in virtue ethics, would, if widely accepted, lead to considerable negative effects for conservation. Conservation practice cannot afford to neglect consequences. Moreover, the do-no-harm maxim does not always lead to better outcomes for animal welfare.