Compassionate conservation holds that compassion should transform conservation. It has prompted heated debate and has been criticized strongly. We reviewed the debate to characterize compassionate conservation and to philosophically analyze critiques that are recurring and that warrant further critical attention. The necessary elements of compassionate conservation relate to the moral value of sentient animals and conservation and to science and conservation practice. Although compassionate conservation has several nontraditional necessary conditions, it also importantly allows a degree of pluralism in values and scientific judgment regarding animals and conservation practice. We identified 52 specific criticisms from 11 articles that directly critique compassionate conservation. We closely examined 33 of these because they recurred regularly or included substantial questions that required further response. Critics criticized compassionate conservation's ethical foundations, scientific credentials, clarity of application, understanding of compassion, its alleged threat to conservation and biodiversity. Some criticisms, we found, are question begging, confused, or overlook conceptual complexity. These criticisms raise questions for critics and proponents, regarding, for example, equal versus differential intrinsic moral value of different sentient animals (including humans), problems of natural and human-caused suffering of wild animals and predation, and the acceptability of specific conservation practices within compassionate conservation. By addressing recurring and faulty critiques of compassionate conservation and identifying issues for compassionate conservation to address, this review provides a clearer basis for crucial ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue about ethics, values, and conservation.
'Recognizing animal personhood in compassionate conservation' by Arian D. Wallach, Chelsea Batavia, Marc Bekoff, Shelley Alexander, Liv Baker, Dror Ben-Ami, Louise Boronyak, Adam P. A. Cardilin, Yohay Carmel, Danielle Celermajer, Simon Coghlan, Yara Dahdal, Jonatan J. Gomez, Gisela Kaplan, Oded Keynan, Anton Khalilieh, Helen Kopnina, William S. Lynn, Yamini Narayanan, Sophie Riley, Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, Esty Yanco, Miriam A. Zemanova and Daniel Ramp in (2020) Conservation Biology comments
Compassionate conservation is based on the ethical position that actions taken to protect biodiversity should be guided by compassion for all sentient beings. Critics argue that there are 3 core reasons harming animals is acceptable in conservation programs: the primary purpose of conservation is biodiversity protection; conservation is already compassionate to animals; and conservation should prioritize compassion to humans. We used argument analysis to clarify the values and logics underlying the debate around compassionate conservation. We found that objections to compassionate conservation are expressions of human exceptionalism, the view that humans are of a categorically separate and higher moral status than all other species. In contrast, compassionate conservationists believe that conservation should expand its moral community by recognizing all sentient beings as persons. Personhood, in an ethical sense, implies the individual is owed respect and should not be treated merely as a means to other ends. On scientific and ethical grounds, there are good reasons to extend personhood to sentient animals, particularly in conservation. The moral exclusion or subordination of members of other species legitimates the ongoing manipulation and exploitation of the living worlds, the very reason conservation was needed in the first place. Embracing compassion can help dismantle human exceptionalism, recognize nonhuman personhood, and navigate a more expansive moral space.
The authors argue
Western culture traditionally regarded humans as exceptional among all animals (Rose 2011). This belief was challenged by scientific and philosophical breakthroughs confirming Charles Darwin's view that “there is no fundamental difference” between humans and other animals (Darwin 1871). Today, it is beyond dispute that many animals are sentient beings (Low et al. 2012; Bekoff & Pierce 2017). Much has changed since the 1960s, when primatologist Jane Goodall was castigated for ascribing chimpanzees with personalities and feelings (Goodall 1998). Despite this, even those nonhuman animals with recognized mental, emotional, and social sophistication (such as mammals, birds, and cephalopods) are still readily treated as means to human ends (Midgley 1985). Conservation is no exception (Wallach et al. 2018).
Although conservation was founded on a uniquely expansive ethic that recognizes the intrinsic value of the living world (Batavia & Nelson 2017), nonhuman animals do not necessarily meet a better fate in the hands of conservationists than in any other hands (Ramp & Bekoff 2015; Wallach et al. 2018). Conservationists often embody deep concern, even love, for wildlife and nature. Yet, this can be a “violent love” (Srinivasan & Kasturirangan 2017). Systemic harm of sentient animals in conservation is enabled by 3 ethical orientations: collectivism (or holism)—the belief that species matter more than individuals; instrumentalism—the treatment of an entity as a means to an end; and nativism—the view that populations established by humans are unnatural (Wallach et al. 2018). These orientations drive conservation practices that use “authoritarian management and control measures” (Bhattacharyya & Larson 2014) and that regard nonhuman animals as “instances of their type” (Vucetich & Nelson 2007) and as “killable” (Haraway 2013) “objects” (Nussbaum 1995).
Compassionate conservation, in contrast, recognizes that the interests and agency of all sentient beings should be protected in conservation practice (Ramp & Bekoff 2015; Wallach et al. 2018). In other words, sentient beings are persons. Personhood, in an ethical sense, implies an entity is owed respect and should not be treated as a means to other ends (Midgley 1985; Dayan 2018). Many traditions (including hunting-based cultures) have long understood the world as animated with multitudes of persons with whom humans form kinship relations (e.g., Rose 2011; Hill 2013; Robinson 2014). Western tradition, however, has largely restricted the notion of personhood to humans, an expression of human exceptionalism that maintains humans as a categorically separate and inherently superior class of being (Plumwood 1993). It is not our purpose to dispute this view, per se, but to offer an alternative; namely, all sentient beings are persons when viewed through the lens of compassion.
The proposition that compassion for sentient beings should inform and where necessary redirect conservation goals and practices has generated intense debate. Recently, a series of critiques of compassionate conservation unfolded in Conservation Biology and included a Conservation Focus “Debating Compassion in Conservation Science” (2019, Volume 33, Issue 4). We considered the main statements made in opposition to compassionate conservation in 5 essays that responded to Wallach et al. (2015) and Wallach et al. (2018): Russell et al. (2016), Driscoll and Watson (2019), Hampton et al. (2019), Hayward et al. (2019), and Oommen et al. (2019) (hereafter critiques or critics). We condensed the critiques into 3 core reasons to reject compassionate conservation and support lethal and invasive conservation practices: the primary purpose (raison d'être) of conservation is biodiversity protection; conservation is already compassionate to animals; and conservation should prioritize compassion to humans (Table 1). We developed these reasons into formal arguments, which allowed us to clarify the values and logic underlying the debate around compassionate conservation. Formal arguments are composed of a set of premises (P) leading to a conclusion (C). An argument is sound when it meets 2 conditions: it is valid, meaning its conclusion necessarily follows from its premises, and its premises are true or appropriate, meaning the empirical premises are factually accurate and the ethical premises are consistently defensible (Hughes et al. 2010).
