Toward Ethical Treatment of Animals in Hawai'i's Natural Areas

Abstract

Human alienation from nature is evidenced by minimal understanding of interrelationships in the wild and an emphasis on individual wild animals. Different viewpoints (utilitarian, biocentric, and theocentric) about the natural world and the place of humans in it color ideas about management of natural areas and the species therein. Decisions about nature should consider a complex of human values including the economic, aesthetic, spiritual, ecological, and humane, along with a preservation ethic for the future. Control of introduced, or alien, animals in Hawai'i, where endangerment and extinction rates of native species are among the highest in the world, and where alien species cause severe degradation and disappearance of near-natural communities, has recently become controversial as a result of confrontational activities by animal rights activists. However, people who "speak for" animals in the world involve a wide variety of groups, including natural resource managers, hunters and fishers, scientists, agriculturists, conservationists, and humane and animal rights groups. An ethical system for wild animals must make good-faith efforts to protect all human values. A good-faith approach to conflict presumes that most groups have codes of right and wrong (ethics), even though some may not be as completely developed as others. We need to "outgrow" narrow views of nature by better understanding human relationships to it through meaningful participation (hunting, management, scientific study, observation, etc.). Actions and nonactions must be governed by a holistic and flexible ethic practically applied to different conflict situations.