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A striking profile of a bush-loving hunter who's trying to draw attention to the impact of feral cat on the biodiversity of native bush in Aotearoa, and provoke action to address is at scale;
This is the most challenging ethical quandary kiwi vegans face, a classic trolley problem.
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Do we prioritise the right to life of introduced animals, and let them decimate native animal populations? Or do we sacrifice the lives of introduced predators to prevent them wiping out entire species. Which goes against the core principles of animal rights; that nonhumans have the same right to life as humans.
In theory, a third option is to excuse killing of any individual decimating native species, including humans. This is at least consistent, but it's also eco-fascism. No thanks.
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@strypey I think it's relatively clear: the introduced predators are infringing on the right to life of the native species that can't defend against them, and thus it falls to us (not incidentally whose fault it is the predators are here in the first place) to hold the line on their behalf.
We should certainly take steps to make the deaths of the predators as quick and painless as we can achieve, but I don't think it unethical to do so in the wider service of conservation.
I guess it's a similar argument regarding human non-violence. Like, Vladimir Putin isn't leaving Ukraine just because we ask him nicely. Force, unfortunately, is sometimes necessary.
@Salty Agreed. Ethically, we have responsibilities to animals, and those responsibilities include making awful decisions that animals can't make for themselves. When we have pets we make ourselves responsible for acting when we see that their unnaturally-extended lives are too painful to continue. Likewise, when we introduce animals to an ecosystem we make ourselves responsible for the survival and flourishing of all species in that ecosystem.
It's ethical to minimise the number of situations like that that that we create. But once we're responsible we can't pretend otherwise. We can't ethically abandon a pet to fend for itself, and we can't abandon an ecosystem to be ravaged by animals we introduced.
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@Salty I pretty much come down in the same place, in theory. But my point is, the ethical calculus is much simpler if you don't believe in animal rights, as most vegans do.
I had to work through this trolly problem when mice were decimating dried food supplies we couldn't afford to replace, putting our wellbeing at risk. I felt bad about every mouse killed - like the guy in the article does about the animals he kills - but I cleared and set the traps regardless.
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It was part of a larger process of realising that ethics are not subject to rational calculation. Something that reading Ken Wilbur really helped me with. To borrow David Chapman's phrase, ethics are "patterned but nebulous". In other words they're inherently subjective, and involve judgment calls, not universal "right" and "wrong" answers.
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Take your Ukraine example. We'd usually say killing people is "wrong". Even when they're doing much more damage to native biodiversity than any nonhuman predators.
But what if they're Ukrainian soldiers killing Russian Federation soldiers who are invading their country and killing their people? Or IDF soldiers carrying out genocidal Likud policy in Gaza? There's no "right" or "wrong" answer to questions like this. Which is why they're so emotionally charged.
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