Rethinking the mantra of biodiversity
Why the past should not determine the future
Originally published in the ABC
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.
The New South Wales state government has recently commenced the aerial killings of 14,000 feral horses residing in Kosciuszko National Park. The goal is to meet the legislated requirement of reducing the number of horses in the park to 3,000 by 2027. This legislation was passed because NSW has the legal mandate of protecting biodiversity and because the activities of feral horses are classified as a threat to native species, such as Corroboree frogs and broad-tooth rats.
This policy illustrates the normative assumptions of conservation policy-makers, which are well-captured in Michael Soulé’s famous article, “What Is Conservation Biology?”. In that article, Soulé makes two key claims:
- that biodiversity is a synonym for “native species diversity”;
- that the protection of native species is the moral cornerstone of the discipline — and hence that sources of ethical value other than biodiversity ought to be subordinated to biodiversity.
We contend that both of these claims are problematic. Before we explain why, it is worth noting that there are alternative accounts of biodiversity which are often, if not always, ignored by policy-makers. For this reason, we are only engaging Soulé’s understanding of biodiversity, which is the one most policy-makers adopt.
Intrinsically valuable forms of being
Why should conserving native species diversity take precedence over the ethical value of animals’ social communities, the bonds they forge among themselves, and their individuality?
For example, when the affective bond between a deer fawn and her mother is severed by shooting, or when the unique social structure of a group of horses is disrupted through killing, intrinsically valuable social bonds are destroyed.
The point is that when we appropriate animals’ habitats, dismantle their communities and relationships, and erase their way of life, we are impeding them from developing in their own ways. We are annihilating intrinsically valuable forms of being.
The inherent dynamism of ecosystems
Furthermore, subordinating the value of affective bonds, social communities, and individuals to biodiversity is morally wrong because the concept of biodiversity is based on a morally arbitrary idea — namely, that of an “idealised ecological community” (IEC). These IECs often include those “native” species that were present in different territories at the point of European colonisation. Species arriving or introduced after the point of European colonisation, or similar past ecological states, are then excluded from IECs and regarded as “alien”, “invasive”, and “threats”.
It is common knowledge in ecological and evolutionary theory, however, that ecosystems are inherently dynamic. This suggests that concepts like the “balance of nature” or conceptions of static ecological communities are fundamentally flawed. The question is: Why should the species composition of a given ecological community be fixed at any past point?
This leads us to conclude that establishing the proper composition of an ecological community at a particular moment in the past is morally arbitrary. Thus, and insofar as biodiversity depends on IECs, we should abandon biodiversity as the most fundamental normative postulate of conservation.
What are the alternatives?
What is the alternative, then, to the policy of killing 14,000 horses in Kosciuszko National Park? Given that the chief problem for some animals in the landscape is horses’ trampling, a potential alternative would be to build off-limits fencing in particularly sensitive areas — such as stream banks and ponds — and alongside roads to prevent collisions. Fences should be built in such a way that horses retain adequate access to natural water points, however, and so that they have minimal effects on non-target animals.
Such a proposal is modest and a realistic example of what could be implemented if policy-makers did not subordinate horses’ lives and social communities to a narrow understanding of biodiversity.
But if biodiversity is not the moral cornerstone of conservation, what should provide our moral compass? We propose a pluralistic ethic to protect animals and nature based on two maxims: First, we question our right to dominate nature and nonhuman lives based on arbitrary human views of what nature should be like, which, as our proposal reveals, is not the same as a non-interventionist approach.
Second, we propose to prioritise wild animals — that is, to acknowledge that animals have an interest in leading their own lives, making their own decisions as individuals, forming emotional connections according to their preferences, and freely shaping their own forms of social organisation within their communities, territories, and dynamic ecological communities.
Kim Hightower is the associate editor for PAN Works.
Please visit PAN Works for more about our work on ethics and animal wellbeing.