Animal Ethics in the Wild. Cambridge University Press (2023)

In this thesis, I will claim that—based on a few reasonable assumptions about the capacities many nonhumans most probably possess—capacity-oriented accounts of ethics must recognize the full moral considerability of all sentient animals. Once moral considerability has been established, I will maintain that there are strong reasons to intervene in nature to prevent or reduce the harms wild animals suffer. Even though many animal ethicists have traditionally claimed that humans should stay away as far as possible from the natural habitats of wild animals, I will show that all arguments to relieve us from our general obligation to intervene in nature on their behalf are either inconsistent, or based on a very skewed conception of life in the wild. Consequently, I will argue that (1) we have to raise concern about the subject of wild animal suffering, (2) we have to convince ecologists to shift their resources from conservation biology to "welfare biology," and (3) we must question speciesism, as most of us already accept that we should intervene in nature when human interests are at stake.

Routledge, 2021

Though many ethicists have the intuition that we should leave nature alone, Kyle Johannsen argues that we have a duty to research safe ways of providing large-scale assistance to wild animals. Using concepts from moral and political philosophy to analyze the issue of wild animal suffering (WAS), Johannsen explores how a collective, institutional obligation to assist wild animals should be understood. He claims that with enough research, genetic editing may one day give us the power to safely intervene without perpetually interfering with wild animals’ liberties.---------------Questions addressed include: In what way is nature valuable and is interference compatible with that value? Is interference a requirement of justice? What are the implications of WAS for animal rights advocacy? What types of intervention are promising?---------------Expertly moving the debate about human relations with wild animals beyond its traditional confines, Wild Animal Ethics is essential reading for students and scholars of political philosophy and political theory studying animal ethics, environmental ethics, and environmental philosophy. -------------------For an interview I had about this book, with the New Books Network, go to https://newbooksnetwork.com/wild-animal-ethics. For an interview about it on the Knowing Animals podcast, go to https://iroarpod.com/episode-162-reducing-wild-animal-suffering-with-kyle-johannsen/.

Relations 3 (1), 2015

Studies about the moral consideration of nonhuman animals have experienced a tremendous development in the last decade. An important topic which is recently receiving increasing attention is the idea that we may have reasons not only to abstain from harming wild animals but also to help those in need. Life in the wild is far from being idyllic: wild animals undergo systematic harms on a daily basis, due to intra and interspecific aggressions (predation, parasitism) and other natural causes (e.g. starvation, disease, harsh weather conditions). Though it is usually accepted that we have no obligation to prevent or to reduce the occurrence of these harmful states of affairs, if the interests of nonhuman animals are morally relevant at all, it seems that the interests of animals living in the wild should also be taken into account in moral deliberation. This number will be dedicated to addressing in detail this vastly unexplored issue, challenging life in the wild as a “flat moral landscape”.

2022

Significant disagreement remains in ethics about the duties we have towards wild animals. This paper aims to mediate those disagreements by exploring how they are supported by, or diverge from, the common-sense ethical principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, autonomy and justice popular in medical ethics. We argue that these principles do not clearly justify traditional conservation or a 'hands-off ' approach to wild-animal welfare; instead, they support natural negative duties to reduce the harms that we cause as well as natural positive duties to promote the welfare of wild animals.

Routledge, 2025

This book further develops the interventionist literature on wild animal suffering using different theoretical frameworks, including some that have never previously been used to ground our positive duties to wild animals.------------Though we’ve always known that the wild is a nasty place where predators lethally attack prey, only recently have most animal ethicists come to realize that most wild animals fail to flourish. In fact, what we know about wild animal reproduction suggests that the majority of sentient beings born into the world may not even live lives worth living. It’s not unreasonable for one to initially respond to the above with a sense of depressed resignation, but a growing number of ethicists believe that we both can and should intervene. The purpose of this book is to further develop the interventionist literature by bringing together philosophers who agree that we have significant duties to help wild animals, but who use different theoretical frameworks, or who disagree about the details, e.g., about the reasons that ground our obligations to help wild animals, about how those obligations should be classified, about the content of our obligations, about the means we should use to fulfill our obligations, etc.------------This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers and students of animal ethics, animal welfare, environmental ethics, philosophy, and sustainability. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethics, Policy & Environment.

Broadview Press, 2009

Can animals be regarded as part of the moral community? To what extent, if at all, do they have moral rights? Are we wrong to eat them, hunt them, or use them for scientific research? Can animal liberation be squared with the environmental movement? Taylor traces the background of these debates from Aristotle to Darwin and sets out the views of numerous contemporary philosophers – including Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Mary Anne Warren, J. Baird Callicott, and Martha Nussbaum – with ethical theories ranging from utilitarianism to eco-feminism. The new edition also includes provocative quotations from some of the major writers in the field. As the final chapter insists, animal ethics is more than just an “academic” question: it is intimately connected both to our understanding of what it means to be human and to pressing current issues such as food shortages, environmental degradation, and climate change.

Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, 2015

The question of the disvalue suffered by animals in nature, that is, the problem of suffering and other harms suffered by animals in nature, has taken on a new relevance at present, becoming a matter of great practical importance, to be addressed in applied ethics. Taking this disvalue into account, several authors have examined its moral implications. This paper reviews the main literature that has dealt with those issues over the last years. It presents an annotated bibliography of principal works on this question. The existence of subsequent inclusion of essays in a collective work is indicated in the notes.

Between the Species: An Online Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals, 2003

Ethics, Policy & Environment, 2023

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.