Conservation after Biodiversity
An analysis of Michael E. Soulé’s ‘What is Conservation Biology?’
Originally published in Biological Conservation
by Dr. Pablo Castelló and Dr. Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila
Dr. Francisco Santiago-Ávila is a Fellow and board member of PAN Works, as well as the Science & Ethics Manager at Project Coyote. Fran researches and practices the application of nature ethics to our mixed-community of people, animals and nature, with a focus on the promotion of worldviews rooted in non-anthropocentrism, an ethic of care, and justice. Dr. Pablo Costelló is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Animal Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University. Pablo’s research focuses on his theory of “zoodemocracy” — which centers political agency in more-than-human animals. In drawing on multidisciplinary theories, he seeks to leverage mechanisms by which to concretize and systematize animals’ legal and moral rights in accordance with their claims to wellbeing.
Posted here is the abstract, followed by a series of core quotations, from their recent paper; the full article can be accessed here.
Abstract
In this article we analyse Michael E. Soulé’s normative postulates in ‘What Is Conservation Biology?’ In the first section, we provide an exegetical reading of the normative postulates and demonstrate that they subordinate all sources of value to biodiversity. We question this subordinating logic because it permits, we argue, the enactment of morally wrongful policies. In the second section, we demonstrate that biodiversity and the integrity of ecosystems depend on an idealized conception of ecological communities that is morally arbitrary. Both, subordinating all sources of value to biodiversity, and this morally arbitrary conception of ecological communities leads us to conclude that protecting biodiversity ought not to be the most fundamental normative postulate of conservation biology. To end, we propose a pluralist ethic that foregrounds: self-determination, community, and social relationships; rejects human dominion over animals; and emphasizes protective, preventive and non-harmful interventions.
“Why should diversity of native species be normatively more fundamental than, for example, the social and communal relations of wild animals?”
“We think that when the affective bond that exists between a deer fawn and her mother is destroyed because one of them is shot, an intrinsically valuable relationship is lost. Similarly, when the specific forms of social organization of a band of horses is eliminated by capturing horses so that they are subsequently domesticated, or killed –as current conservation policies mandate in, for example, New South Wales, Australia (New South Wales, 2021 [7]) and in the Western United States (Phillips, 2021)–, an intrinsically valuable form of sociality is lost. The same can be said of individual wolves, whom are still killed for mere entertainment, or due to prejudices (Santiago-´Avila et al., 2018). The point is that when we displace nonhuman animals from their territories, strip them of their communities and relationships, and obliterate their forms of life, we are impeding animals to develop on their own terms. We are destroying intrinsically valuable forms of flourishing.”
“Why should the number of species in a given territory be ethically more fundamental than respecting the forms of social organization of communities of wild animals, or respecting the affective bonds that nonhuman animals forge with each other, or their moral right to flourish as the kind of individuals they are?”
“Ethologists, scientists, philosophers, and conservationists have long demonstrated that wild animals like the ones we mention in the previous section are agents in their own right; that is, they are the kinds of beings who make decisions. Wild animals forge emotional bonds and their communities have their own modes of social organization. Because wild animals can forge friendships, communities, and author their own lives, they are not a mere means to human ends; wild animals are ends in themselves. The point is not only that conservation’s moral and political compass should not assume that humans have a fundamental right to own and dominate wild animals; we should also recognize that wild animals themselves have a moral right to decide their own fates as individuals and communities, to develop affective relationships of their choosing, and to co-author their own forms of social organization in their communities and territories.”
Kim Hightower is the associate editor for PAN Works.
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