Compassionate conservation in practice
A values-driven, interdisciplinary, pluralistic, and deliberative community
Originally published in Biological Conservation
by William S. Lynn, Liv Baker, William T. Borrie, Adam P.A. Cardilini, Shelley M. Alexander, Simon Coghlan, Paul Cryer, Gavin T. Bonsen, Tristan T. Derham, Oded Keynan, Christine M. Reed, Sophie Riley, Erin A. Ryan, Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, Kristen Walker, Amaroq E. Weiss, and Nadia Xenakis
What follows is a Preamble, authored by William S. Lynn, along with the Abstract, Introduction, and a select quotation from the article.
Preamble
Several years ago PAN Works formed a research team to look at compassionate conservation in practice. Led by Adam Cardilini and Liv Baker, the team also included Bill Borrie and myself.
At the time, compassionate conservation was the subject of contempt by some traditional conservationists who dismissed ethical and scientific concerns for the wellbeing of animals as individuals as well as social communities. This does not come as a surprise. Traditional conservation tends to instrumentalize animals as a mere means to biodiversity protection and recreation. This involves dismissing animal wellbeing in absolute or relative terms — either animals lack intrinsic value and don’t matter, or their value and interests are always at the back of the bus. Yet there is a cohort of conservationists open to a deeper integration of the ethics and science of animal wellbeing, and we wanted to reach out to this contingent with a sophisticated exploration of what compassionate conservation means in practice.
So we set up a multi-part Delphi study to explore the perspectives of compassionate conservation practitioners through iterative rounds of surveys, open-ended questions and case study responses. Our team wanted to explore not just the theory but the practice of compassionate conservation. As theory and practice are integrated in praxis, this would both reveal more about the theoretical framing of compassionate conservation, while most importantly, outline its implications in practice. Participation in the study qualified respondents to join us as co-authors on the final manuscript.
The volume and quality of the data we collected is huge. We are working through four articles reporting on the result. This is the first of the four articles to be published. The second is under review, the third is in process, and the final manuscript will be started shortly.
In this effort we are enormously fortunate to have world class experts on the team. Adam Cardilini is an expert on ecology from Deakin University, and an early voice demanding compassionate conservation receive serious consideration. Liv Baker, from Sarah Lawrence College, helped found the field of compassionate conservation, and is the architect of its four most quoted principles. Bill Borrie, also from Deakin University, is a renowned qualitative researcher in environmental management. So too, our co-authors contributed essential insights that are incorporated into our results. Finally, we a grateful to Vincent Devictor, his team of editors, and the reviewers at the journal Biological Conservation. Their welcoming and challenging responses to our manuscript helped make this a far better article.
Abstract
Conservation biology’s purported remit is conserving nature by protecting species, habitats, and ecosystems. Because of this the field has historically given short shrift to the wellbeing of individual animals themselves and their role in nature protection. This approach ignores substantial scientific and ethical evidence showing that many animals are sentient, sapient and social beings who have intrinsic value and individual wellbeing. Compassionate conservation (CC) is an emergent paradigm of conservation arising to redress this absolute or relative dismissal of wild lives. Noting that the practice of CC is not well characterized, we used a modified Delphi method to explore the meaning and significance of such practices. Contrary to the stereotypes of critics, CC is not a “do nothing” but a “do better and do right” approach to working in the field. Recognizing that all science is value-laden, CC is self-consciously guided by a bounded pluralism of ethical values that inform its practice. We characterize these values as a commitment to the intrinsic moral value of people, animals and nature, and an ethics of care for their wellbeing. CC emphasizes the alignment of values and practice, coexistence as an overall goal, cooperation in the sense of working with and not against nature, honesty about the competing demands of individuals and groups in ecological and social communities, humility about the extent of our knowledge, restraint in undertaking interventions that lack efficacy, and strict scrutiny of both the ethical and scientific justifications for actions affecting animal wellbeing.
Introduction
Animals and their wellbeing have long been neglected by human societies, with most animals in most contexts receiving little to no consideration. This includes the cursory, and at times outright, dismissal of the wellbeing of animals in scientific practice (Midgley, 1998). While conservation biology has seen its remit as conserving nature by protecting species, habitats, and ecosystems (Soulé, 1985) the field historically has given short shrift to the wellbeing of individual animals themselves (Bekoff and Pierce, 2017; Castelló and Santiago-Ávila, 2023; Ferraro et al., 2023). This is despite the overwhelming science and ethics that speaks to many animals being sentient with an intrinsic value of their own. By this we mean animals are variously aware (sentient), self-aware (sapient) and embedded in ecological and social relationships (social) that reflect their inherent worth without reference to human uses for them (Baker et al., 2024; Bekoff et al., 2002; Lynn et al., 2023; Midgley, 1995; Proctor et al., 2013). Much of conservation biology and traditional forms of conservation continue to justify practices that are inconsistent with ethical and ecological understandings of how animals engage with their worlds (Edelblutte et al., 2023; Ferdowsian et al., 2022; Zemanova and Cardilini, n.d.). Out of this criticism, alternative approaches to conservation practice have emerged, wherein the wellbeing of individual animals and conservation are seen not as in conflict, but as fundamentally entangled phenomena (Baker, 2017). Compassionate conservation is an alternative paradigm in this respect (Baker, 2013; Ramp, 2013; Wallach et al., 2020).
Traditional conservation approaches, outlined by Soulé among others, have often focused on populations, species, and ecosystems as a whole. In contrast, compassionate conservation argues that we can and should consider the wellbeing of individual animals as we address broader ecological concerns. Rather than seeing individual wellbeing and ecosystem health as competing priorities, this approach recognizes that individuals play important ethological and ecological roles within their larger communities. In fact, recognizing and understanding these roles and their entanglement help us better comprehend population dynamics, species interactions, and ecosystem functioning, and thus is a way to advance conservation biology, policy and practice (Baker and Winkler, 2020a; Baker and Winkler, 2020b). While we authors do not believe in a singular, orthodox approach to compassionate conservation, there is widespread consensus and concern among the community for the intrinsic value of wild animal lives, and the protection of their web of life (Coghlan and Cardilini, 2022; Lynn, 2020; Santiago-Ávila and Lynn, 2020).
In this light, compassionate conservation is guided by a set of principles which explicitly attempts to integrate the scientific and ethical consideration of animals into conservation practice. First articulated by Baker et al. (2015), these principles have implications for animal value, conservation value, and science and conservation practice, holding proponents to standards of practice through a bounded moral pluralism. This pluralism sees principles as rules of thumb that guide thought and action, not rigid rules and beliefs to which one must exclusively subscribe. This understanding of principle allows for different and sometimes conflicting beliefs and values, while at the same time retaining a focus on the wellbeing of animals in conservation thought and practice (Coghlan and Cardilini, 2022; Lynn et al., 2023).
To be sure, some articulations of compassionate conservation have framed it as virtue ethics focused on cultivating compassion in conservationists (Wallach et al., 2018). This gives rise to claims that compassionate conservation is a ‘do nothing approach’ to conservation, one without implications for actual practice (Griffin et al., 2020). However, these and other criticisms levelled at compassionate conservation (e.g., Callen et al., 2020; Griffin et al., 2020; Sekar and Shiller, 2020) have been reviewed and often found to be reactionary, confused, and overlooking of conceptual complexity (Coghlan and Cardilini, 2022).
Compassionate conservation practice necessitates shifting away from human control and domination of wildlife and habitat, and towards promoting wellbeing and agency in the nonhuman world. It also means seeking nonlethal and nonharmful interventions that create favorable conditions for life to flourish. It is a canard that compassionate conservation is a “do nothing approach”. Rather, compassionate conservationists seek to “do better and do right” by other animals and the natural world by integrating a serious engagement with and consistent application of ethics, including an animal centered ethic, with conservation science.
Nicole Roberts is the associate editor for PAN Works.
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