Beneficently Intervening for Wild Animals is a Logical Consistency

Extending Our Moral Circle: Why We Should Help Wild Animals

By Philip Kratz

Image 1 - A hedgehog carrying moss to build a nest by Alexas_Fotos.

Introduction

 

Humans constantly impact wild animals—often for the worse. Through climate change, construction, and roadkill, we intervene in their lives daily. Yet, ideas of intervening for their benefit mostly face objections. This article explores why that logic is inconsistent. If we are willing to change their world for our convenience, we should be in favour of beneficent intervention (like vaccinations, food provision, or medical aid). Like us, wild animals are sentient; they feel pain and happiness and have a fundamental interest in living lives with as little harm as possible.

An Unexpected, Harmful Push 

Imagine you walk down a street, alone and peacefully. Suddenly, you get pushed off the pavement and fall into a bush. What is the harm? It is a simple yet powerful question, and if you want, take a moment to think about what you would consider the harm in this scenario. 

• Maybe you break an arm or sprain an ankle. 

• You might experience psychological harm in the form of stress, trauma or diminished feeling of personal safety. 

The key point is that “the push” itself is not the harm but its consequences, although you might rightfully call the push a harmful action.

Should we only care about human-caused harm?

Many people believe harm is only morally important when a moral agent causes it. Typically, (adult) humans are considered to be moral agents - i.e. someone who is capable of making moral judgments, understanding right and wrong, and being held accountable for their actions.

It was never specified that a human caused the push. However, as you possess moral status as a human, this event is morally relevant even if the push was not caused by a moral agent. 

While the situation would not be the same if it weren’t a human-caused push, some aspects and consequences are similar, if not identical.  For instance, if you broke your arm, in both scenarios, you would seek out medical help. 

We would do so because we want to mitigate the amount of suffering we experience. This is something that is generally true for humanity as a whole.

A large part of our society is built around public and private safety.

Examples can range from law implementation to education to practical measurements like police, hospitals, help lines, vaccination programmes, speed limits, fire alarms in our own houses and houses themselves and so on. 

Rightfully, large amounts of taxes are spent to continuously improve safety measures and our quality of life. While humans should not receive less attention, there is another group that is largely neglected and yet shares the same land, the same resources, and often even similar capacities and cognitive experiences: animals in the wild. 

Image 2 - A squirrel in Richmond, UK, having a taste experience by Said Camlice

Animals feel and have an interest in not suffering

Since 2022, the UK’s Animal Sentience Act has formally recognised that all vertebrates, decapod crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, shrimp, etc.) and cephalopod molluscs (octopus, squid, etc.) are capable of feeling pain and joy. This means these animals can experience happiness, harm and suffering throughout their lives.

Unlike adult humans, animals are not moral agents. However, it has been argued that they deserve moral patienthood because of their capacity to feel pain and pleasure. Moral patients are typically entities that can be harmed or benefited by actions, but they do not necessarily make moral decisions themselves. Similar to humans who are not able to reason, we would not hold an infant morally accountable for causing harm, but it is surely morally bad if they get harmed. 

Intuitively, many of us would agree that the same principle would be true for animals. For instance, kicking a football or a rock is different to kicking a deer. Some would argue that kicking a deer is only morally bad because a moral agent causes harm. As we established earlier,

Whether an action is truly

harmful depends on who it

affects, not what caused it.

In this case, this action is primarily morally bad because the deer, as a moral patient, suffers. If we accept the moral patienthood of the deer, we should care about her suffering regardless of the source. The following analogy about a hurt deer will demonstrate it:

Imagine you walk through the forest and you spot a deer with a broken leg who cannot move. It looks like a human broke her leg, but as you approach closer, you notice a rock fell onto it. It would not make sense to not help her just because the suffering was naturally caused.

Again, what matters is the suffering of the deer, and that we have the means to mitigate this suffering, e.g. through calling a wildlife sanctuary or offering protection, food, and water.

In fact, if somebody told you this story and said they did not help because the suffering was naturally caused, you might be shocked and/or feel empathy for the deer. Maybe you would even drive there and help the deer yourself. Most people will agree that beneficial intervention is completely acceptable - if not desirable in this situation. 

It follows that we not only take seriously the harm that humans cause but natural sources of harm as well. We already strongly apply this logic to ourselves when we try to cure diseases or protect us, and other humans, from natural disasters. We not only try to mitigate the harms these events cause, but also act remedially/curatively. We do this to reduce suffering and/or prevent morally bad situations.

If suffering is inherently bad and helping is morally good, then these principles should apply universally, not just

to humans. 

Consequently, since the vast majority of sentient beings are animals on earth, it could be a big mistake not to include them in your principles.

What objections are there to proactively helping wild animals? 

Tractability/ feasibility: Countless examples like the eradication of rabies and other diseases in many European countries exist where interventions that help wild animals (like mass vaccinations) have been carried out successfully. Therefore, arguments of feasibility do not hold. 

Scale: Sometimes it is argued that we should avoid assisting wild animals because we could never help all wild animals. While this claim might be true, it does not follow that we should not help at all. Similarly, we cannot help all humans or cure all diseases in humans, but it does not mean that we shouldn’t help those whom we can help.

Imagine 100 deer are about to starve to death, and you could feed 20 of those deer. Would you really refrain from doing so just because you cannot help all equally? While both scenarios are sad, surely the death of 80 deer is less bad than the death of 100 deer. Moreover, this situation is not only ‘less bad’, but benefiting 20 moral patients is morally good.  

Intervention as “Hybris”/Playing God/ Human Superiority: As we are already constantly intervening with natural processes, the focus should be on what these interventions should look like, not whether they should take place. Mostly, we intervene for human interests like agriculture, infrastructure development or just human leisure.

All these interactions cause possibly more harm than benefit to animals in the wild. Therefore, refraining from intervention for the sake of the animals could mean we only want to intervene when it is good for us (while often being bad for them). This would be discrimination against wild animals and their interests, and therefore should not be common practice.

Prioritise Humans: Maybe your priorities lie in helping humans, but that does not mean we shouldn’t help wild animals at all. In this scenario, at least we can advocate for a future where humans have the means and knowledge to help animals and humans alike. In addition, while you might not have the capacity to help animals, at least we can try to mitigate our negative impacts. 

Speciesism: The only position that rejects giving comparable interests of humans and animals similar consideration is speciesism. Much like sexism or racism, speciesism asserts that it is acceptable to treat individuals differently based solely on their group membership.

The fundamental flaw shared by these ideologies is that they permit exploitation based on morally irrelevant traits, such as skin colour, sex, or species. By prioritising these superficial characteristics, speciesism ignores the only criterion that truly matters for moral consideration: the capacity to experience happiness or suffering.

Other Objections: If you have other possible objections, I invite you to visit the well-crafted Wikipedia page of “Wild Animal Suffering” and open the section on the philosophical status. 

In the end, because our direct and indirect interactions with wild animals are inevitable - and often harmful - the question should not be whether we intervene, but how [1] [2] [3]. To shift from harm to help, focusing on the causes of animal suffering is crucial.

How often do Animals in the Wild Suffer?

Many of us go into the forest, onto a mountain or onto a beach for leisure. Some might even fancy the idea of living a life in the wild. While our experiences are true for ourselves, we should not generalise a romanticised view of the wild; wherever sentience exists, there is suffering.

Next to human-induced harm, most wild animals face severe natural hardships like disease, parasitism, starvation, malnutrition, dehydration, injury, predation, conflicts with other animals, psychological stress and extreme weather events. [2] Despite a few examples, we nearly never take these harms seriously. While this is tragic news for wild animals, it also means you, as an individual, can have a high impact. 

Image 3 - A fox with Sarcoptic mange by Acabashi

Ways to mitigate suffering in the wild

In conservation and ecological management, we need to shift practices and goals away from harming animals. Treating animals instrumentally, like killing them to reach goals for ecosystems or species abundance, would be unacceptable. Instead,

We should value animals intrinsically and manage ecosystems in a way that

they serve animals, not

vice versa. 

Ecosystems would still be important, but instrumentally. Furthermore, the principles of Compassionate Conservation can serve as a guideline.

Researchers can apply the “3Rs”: The framework of Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement aims to minimise the use and suffering of all animals in research, regardless of species. This tool, created by Dr. Miriam Zemanova, can help researchers to minimise the invasiveness of their project: https://3rswildlife.info/method-finder/

Boost success on an academic level through implementing Welfare Biology as the study of sentient beings’ well-being in relation to their environment: Organisations like the Wild Animal Initiative and Animal Ethics Org advocate for improving the welfare of all wild animals. 

Individual impact: We, as individuals, can always challenge our moral circle. We can start by reducing our own negative impact, spreading the word, joining organisations, signing petitions that urge hunting bans or donating money to effective charities. To find the most effective charities that work on animal causes, you can use guidance from https://animalcharityevaluators.org/. 

References 

[1] Horta, O. (2010). Debunking the idyllic view of natural processes: Population dynamics and suffering in the wild. Telos: Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios Utilitaristas, 17(1), 73–90.

[2] Faria, C., & Paez, E. (2015). Animals in need: The problem of wild animal suffering and intervention in nature. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, 3(1), 7–13.

[3] Nussbaum, M. C. (2022). Justice for animals: Our collective responsibility. Simon & Schuster.

Images

Image 1 - Hedgehog carrying moss to build a nest by Alexas_Fotos on Unsplash.  Image Source Copyright License

Image 2 - A squirrel in Richmond, UK, having a taste experience by Said Camlica. Image Source Copyright License

Image 3 - A fox with sarcoptic mange on the lawn of the cafe garden in the City of London Cemetery, Newham, London, England. By Acabashi.

Image Source Copyright License