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Welcoming, wild animals, and obligations to assist

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posted on 2023-11-15, 16:37 authored by Josh MilburnJosh Milburn

What we could call ‘relational non-interventionism’ holds that we have no general obligation to alleviate animal suffering, and that we do not typically have special obligations to alleviate wild animals’ suffering. Therefore, we do not generally have a duty to intervene in nature to alleviate wild animal suffering. However, there are a range of relationships that we may have with wild animals that do generate special obligations to aid – and the consequences of these obligations can be surprising. In this paper, I argue that we have special obligations to those animals we have historically welcomed or encouraged into our spaces. This includes many wild animals. One of the consequences of this is that we may sometimes possess obligations to actively prevent rewilding – or even to dewild – for the sake of welcomed animals who thrive in human-controlled spaces.

Funding

British Academy [grant number PF19\100101]

History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

  • International Relations, Politics and History

Published in

Ethics, Policy & Environment

Volume

26

Issue

2

Pages

231 - 248

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© Josh Milburn

Publisher statement

This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Ethics, Policy & Environment. Josh Milburn (2023) Welcoming, Wild Animals, and Obligations to Assist, Ethics, Policy & Environment, 26:2, 231-248, DOI: 10.1080/21550085.2023.2200730. The text of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Acceptance date

2023-04-05

Publication date

2023-11-14

Copyright date

2023

ISSN

2155-0085

eISSN

2155-0093

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Josh Milburn. Deposit date: 14 November 2023

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