Welcoming, wild animals, and obligations to assist

Abstract

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 usually 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, it is argued 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.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Milburn, J. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0638-8555
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access: 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/.
Keywords:	Animal ethics; Wild animal suffering; Dewilding; Rewilding; Urban animals; Welcoming; Eencouragement; Hospitality; Special obligations
Dates:	Published: December 2021 Published (online): 27 November 2021 Accepted: 1 November 2021
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number British Academy PF19\100101
Depositing User:	Symplectic Sheffield
Date Deposited:	29 Nov 2021 11:39
Last Modified:	29 Nov 2021 11:40
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1007/s10806-021-09873-0
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:180939

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Welcoming, wild animals, and obligations to assist

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