Whenever I speak at conferences and other events, I am asked a series of questions about ethics and what it means for human-animal relations. These are actually two, quite different questions. The first asks what ethics is per se, and the second how ethics can be made practical in everyday life.

Perhaps the most common of the second, practical type of question concerns predation. ‘Is predation moral? Is it right for one creature to kill another? How should I think and feel about the wolf that kills the deer or elk or moose? These are the kind of predation-related questions that advocates, citizens, policy-makers and scientists have asked me over the years.

While I have heard this questions often enough, until recently I do not think I took it as seriously as I should. I did not fully appreciate the moral weight it has for people: how it makes some hearts heavy and leaves other minds ill-at-ease.

I felt the weight, however, during a conference session on the ethics of wolf-human relations. A member of the audience noted that as much as we care about the well-being of wolves, we should also care about the well-being of the prey (e.g. deer, elk) and competitors (e.g. coyotes, dogs) whom wolves kill. This person wondered what guidance ethics gives for thinking about wolves killing other creatures? Is it right, or wrong, or something else? Damn good questions, and the resonance they had with the rest of the audience alerted me that something bigger than I had realized was at stake here.

Shortly thereafter, I was reading about the ‘problem’ of predation by a theologian and philosopher, respectively. The likened predation to vampirism, and suggested that we take the wolf lying with the lamb (or was it the lion?) as a literal vision of how nature should work. You can read more about this imaginative interpretation in Andrew Linzey’s book, Animal Theology (1994). The philosopher said we had a duty to minimize pain and suffering. Thus we should work towards the day when all predators like wolves are removed from the wild. Species like deer and elk would then be given birth control to manage their populations. You can read more about this brilliant idea in Steven Saponitz, Morals, Reason and Animals (1987).

A common response to all this is taught in science and philosophy courses. It is that predation is a non-problem. Animals are biological machines, functional units of an ecological process. They behave according to instinct, and are not capable of thinking or acting with moral (or immoral) ends in mind. Nature is what it is, and ethics has nothing to do with it. There is a certain truth in this line of thinking. We should not impose human norms on the creatures of the non-human world.

And yet if we take science seriously, we easily see that our understanding of nature is growing more complex each day. Complex enough to recognize the roots and even manifestation of what we call ethical behaviour in a wide variety of species (see Mark Bekoff, Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues, 2006). It turns out that some primates have a sense of justice, and elephants have elaborate bonds of mutuality and solidarity. So maybe this question about ethics and predation is not so easy to dismiss after all.

Over the years, the best answer about the ethics of predation that I have found comes from Holmes Rolston III. He says predation is a ‘sad-good’ (Environmental Ethics, 1988). Instead of dismissing the subject of ethics and nature, Rolston peers into the natural world to see what lessons we may learn that will inform our ethical thinking. What he discovers is the value of predation in the natural world, something that does not detract from the respect we should have for individual animals.

For Rolston, predation is sad because it involves suffering and the taking of an individual’s life. The prey of wolves such as deer and elk evolved to be both aware and self-aware. They are not only members of a population or species, they are individuals in-and-of themselves. Their behaviour in the face of being stalked or attacked certainly says something about how they value their lives, if only in a deeply felt and embodied way. It’s a strange myopia of an outdated brand of science that would deny the sensibilities deer have about their own world. Thus when a wolf kills a fawn or runs down a straggler in a herd, a surplus animal has not been harvested (to use the agro-economic language of wildlife management). No, an individual life has been lost.

Even so, predation is good because it is a dynamic and indispensable part of nature. Predation is an evolved and ecologically necessary process, part of the trophic (feeding) structure of the biotic world, wherein plants, herbivours and carnivoures literally pass-on energy derived from the sun and material derived from the earth. This is what the poet Gary Snyder meant when he describes Earth as a ‘breathing planet in the sparkling whorls of living light’ (Turtle Island, 1969). Predation is necessary for the well-being of predators and prey, as well as the ecological communities of which they are a part. It is an irrelevant brand of ethics that is willing to say what is right and wrong in nature without paying attention to the real circumstances of the natural world.

To return to the theologian and philosopher, we can now see where they both went wrong. Even though they have distinct worldviews (i.e. Anglican theology, philosophical utilitarianism), both of them fail to appreciate the good that comes from predation. All they see is the sad, and from there quickly move to pronouncing it morally bad.

For our theologian, it is the very intent to kill (either on the animals part, or in Satan’s plan to disrupt Eden) that makes predation so wrong. If I believed the story of Eden was literal and not figurative, I might consider this argument. I cannot take it literally, however, for it flies in the face of everything we know about nature — its biochemical genesis and evolution through the ages – much less the positive value of predation identified by Rolston. For our philosopher, it is the consequence of predation, its associated pain and suffering, which is so morally wrong. And yet if nature can be one of our landmarks in ethics, a literal place in which to situate our thinking and remain practical, then something else comes to light. It is not pain and suffering per se that is wrong, but unnatural pain and suffering. By ignoring the lessons of nature, our philosopher has missed this point.

What weighs most heavily on my heart are the abundant examples of pain and suffering rooted in questionable human actions. Leg-hold traps that animals sometime chew off to escape. Competitions to kill the most coyotes in a single day. The poaching of gorillas and chimpanzees in the bush-meat trade. The capture and sometimes brutal ‘training’ of wild Asian elephants. The widespread practice of poisoning of wolves out of fear, greed or competition. This is pain and suffering with no natural analogue. And here too we find another connection between ethics and predation. It is not only what we can learn from nature about the how and why of predation. It is taking ethical responsibility for our own predatory actions towards animals and the natural world. When people ask about the ethics of predation, I suspect what weighs most heavily on their hearts is the lack of ethical regard people show towards humans and other animals.

Finally, a word of praise for the people who have asked me this question over the years. I think I understand it better now, and I am sorry if I misunderstood you in the past. Implicit in your questions was an appreciation for the well-being of wolves and their prey, both as individuals and as a species. Few of you arbitrarily chose the well-being of an animal over nature (or vis-a-versa). This exemplifies the search for a creative middle ground where the well-being of both might be preserved. Yours was a sensibility very close to Rolston’s insight about sad-goods, a rule-of-thumb to help us place our feet on the right patch of ground. And that is a fine example of your own practical ethics at work.

Cheers, Bill

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Bill Lynn is the founder and Senior Ethics Advisor of Practical Ethics (http://www.practicalethics.net/), and a professor at the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University (www.tufts.edu/vet/cfa).

Image: Tracy Brooks, 2003, Reflection.