Photo by Andy Kazie/Can Stock Photo
Claiming scientific impartiality in wildlife management is an illusion. Preferences, biases, and emotions inform the mindsets of all the actors, regardless of their position. The question is not who is driven by objective science and who is not, but rather whose values and beliefs deserve greater consideration.
In the modern era of wildlife management and conservation, two notions are implicitly employed to justify decisions related to ensuring ecological health and integrity. Firstly, consequentialism promotes the idea that “the ends justify the means”, which, in the context of wildlife management, entails ensuring that populations and species continue to thrive, even if individual animals are sacrificed in the process. Collective survival and species persistence in its habitat emerge as the only benchmarks of success. The second notion associated with wildlife management is scientific reasoning. It states that objective, dispassionate, and quantifiable thinking should govern the design and implementation of wildlife-related policies.
Both notions are unified in their rejection of emotionalism. Guided by species or population-level concerns, wildlife management distances itself from displaying compassion for individual animals or acknowledging the suffering of sentient beings. The emphatically emotive approach to wildlife, it is argued, might come from the goodness of the heart but, inadvertently, it exacerbates the risk of impeding biodiversity protection efforts. In essence. caring for an individual animal detracts attention and resources from the more important matter of maintaining wildlife habitats and populations.
The confluence of consequentialism and scientific reasoning justifies, for example, killing wild animals, if their presence in residential areas frightens the public, regardless of the merit of this apprehension. Similarly, a lethal approach is employed, if one species is believed to impact negatively on the persistence of other species. Unwanted wild animals again become dispensable, subordinate to the priorities of the larger picture. In all cases, according to the officially sanctioned wildlife management, emotional concerns for the fate of individual animals cannot prevail over a measured cost-benefit analysis. Instead, dispassionate and unbiased thinking should guide wildlife managers in all stages of the decision-making process.
The supposed rejection of emotions or biases in wildlife management is illusionary and beset with contradictions and unintended ironies.
The above rationalizations fail, however, under scrutiny. The supposed rejection of emotions or biases in wildlife management is illusionary and beset with contradictions and unintended ironies. Wildlife managers erroneously believe that they somehow attain scientific impartiality in their decision-making by ignoring concerns about sentience and suffering in animals. In other words, since numbers and statistics convey dispassion and objectivity, an approach that embraces them must be, by definition, rational, unbiased, and unemotional.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Certainly, numbers and other quantitative measurement tools can project objectivity, but they constitute merely the end stage of a value-laden process. After all, none of the initial management aspirations emerges from numbers. For instance, the idea of maintaining a certain ecological balance is first subjectively conceived. It reflects decision-makers’ vision of what a given ecological system should look like. Only then is the process of accomplishing this vision quantified and translated into numbers.
Wildlife management policies constitute thus a continuum that begins with ideas, beliefs, and preferences and ends with a numerical representation.
Consequently, if, according to some wildlife management plan, ensuring the existence of the desired ecosystem requires eliminating 200 or 300 wild animals, this number guides the implementation of the plan. And, indeed, following the logic of such a plan, it might very well be objectively valid to argue that killing 300 wild animals will help realize the preferred vision of the ecosystem. However, what is not objectively indisputable is whether such a vision is the only one to strive for and whether it is acceptable to kill individual animals to accomplish this vision. Values, not some unattainable impartiality, again dictate choices. Wildlife management policies constitute thus a continuum that begins with ideas, beliefs, and preferences and ends with a numerical representation. Both parts of the continuum are indispensable to decision-making, and the absence of the former precludes the realization of the latter.
It is the same kind of interconnectedness that reveals the fallacy of viewing qualitative research as an endeavour unrelated to quantitative research. For instance, BMI (body mass index) is obtained by dividing a person’s weight by his or her height, and the prevalence of different BMI categories in a population can be objectively and statistically determined. Numbers don’t lie, one might say, thus conferring impartiality on the obtained data. However, this quantitative precision hides the qualitative decision-making processes underpinning it. Subjectivity predetermines that BMI stands for something valuable – in health outcomes, for example – and that the distinct BMI categories are indeed meaningfully separable. In other words, both the origin of BMI numbers and their interpretation are qualitative, resting on assumptions, beliefs, even hunches. These subjective decisions build a rationale for seeking quantitative results, which, in turn, creates a false impression of impartiality, rigour, and truth.
The ways in which wildlife management’s operations are communicated to the public fail to acknowledge this reality. It is common to neglect the importance of subjective processes, trade-offs, compromises, or ideologies and focus solely on their quantifiable consequences. Protecting wildlife clashes, however, with such socially salient values as urban development and economic growth. In this context, difficult trade-offs need to be made. One set of subjective preferences trumps the other. Inevitably, arbitrary choices dependent on prevailing economic, cultural, and social values shape modern wildlife management.
As always the spirit of age determines the fate of nature. In their genesis, wildlife decisions reflect priorities instrumental to meeting a changeable political and socio-economic context rather than abstract impartiality. Examples of this inescapable reality abound. For instance, the fear of voters’ and corporate lobbies’ dissatisfaction with economic, urban, or job growth – a reaction, which is, by definition, emotional and arbitrary – can become more influential in guiding the principles of wildlife management than needs of the ecosystem.
Such a scenario applies, for instance, to predator management in British Columbia. The fragmentation of habitat along with linear developments including roads and pipelines enabled predators like wolves and cougars to travel more freely throughout the landscape. The decline of ungulate populations in the province is thus blamed by hunting groups on their predators. To address this concern, the BC government has promoted wolf population management by means of hunting and trapping. Sacrificing individual animals from one species to ensure the persistence of other species becomes a predictable rationale. As always, it is claimed to be supported solely by “science.” And the infallibility of mathematics. By stressing the inverse correlation between wolf numbers and ungulate numbers, wildlife managers argue the need to make hard but necessary choices. Opposing such choices and seeking compassion for individual sentient beings contradict the so-called impartiality of the best available science. From this perspective, compassionate conservationists follow irrational emotions, while wildlife managers follow quantifiable reality.
Is it true, however? No, it is not. A particular set of values becomes a decisive factor. Rather than being the only choice, killing wolves is merely the preferred, or easier choice, for reducing the pressure on the ungulate populations. Importantly, it is the choice that reflects expediency and giving in to interest groups’ pressures. After all, clear-cut and salvage logging and habitat fragmentation have been an established culprit behind deer and moose numerical decline. Even hunters admit that. As Jesse Zeman, the director of Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program for the BC Wildlife Federation, stated, “essentially, unsustainable logging has tipped the scale in favour of wolves over deer.”
Clear-cut logging has been, however, removed from the pool of currently available choices, as if it were beyond human control. It is not. Of course, to placate inconvenient demands from conservationists to stop predator control, the interested parties committed themselves to discuss the issue of habitat loss. A convenient cop-out. The consequences of such discussions will be, after all, implemented in the future, if ever, while wolves are being killed now.
A preferred set of values is unambiguously clear. BC wildlife management’s refusal to immediately address the impact of logging and habitat loss signifies giving more weight to particular interest groups. The claim of objectivity crumbles. The pressure from the logging industry, on whose support many politicians depend, has played a role in assigning priorities. Values, preferences, even personal interests have affected decisions. In this context, wildlife managers’ pointing to charts and numbers showing that the wolf culling aids ungulate population recovery efforts camouflages initial value-laden choices underlying data collection.
Dry and technocratic phrasing, such as the need to “manage predators,” is a euphemistic disguise for the joy of recreational slaughter, an emotion that could hardly be more subjective and value-laden.
Moreover, in contrast to the cessation of logging, predator control offers a recreational opportunity for hunters. And, indeed, hunters are not ambivalent in their support of wolf killing. Hunting wolves, according to Zeman, can help correct the ecological imbalance. “When you have such huge changes (in the) landscape, there’s times when you manage prey species and there’s times when you manage predator species.” Of course, for hunters, it is not a chore or burden to shoot wolves. Dry and technocratic phrasing, such as the need to “manage predators,” is a euphemistic disguise for the joy of recreational slaughter, an emotion that could hardly be more subjective and value-laden.
In the end, the pressure from hunters compounds the pressure from loggers. As a result, killing wolves to counter the decline in ungulate populations constitutes a value-laden decision to yield to the demands of two politically influential groups: the logging industry and the hunting lobby. Their demands arise, respectively, from the wish to continue profiting from the ecological devastation and the wish to continue enjoying recreational killing. Again, a given set of preferences and biases underpins wildlife management decisions. These decisions remain just as rooted in subjectivity and values as do the ethical principles guiding compassionate conservation.
The same process applies to ensuring public safety. Even in this area, wildlife management decisions reflect debatable values and preferences rather than scientific impartiality. The fate of black bears in suburban BC neighbourhoods exemplifies this reality. Every year, the systematic annihilation of hundreds of bears is justified as protecting residents from being torn to pieces by the claws of ferocious beasts. Those opposed to the BC Conservation Officers’ lethal approach are labelled as driven by emotions or misplaced compassion.
The truth lies elsewhere, however. The data on violent human-bear encounters lie bare both the demonization of black bears and the mischaracterization of conservationists who want to save these creatures from unnecessary death. Severe injuries from encounters with bears are exceedingly rare and almost always explained by blatantly inappropriate human behaviour. In fact, bear attacks are so infrequent that, just like accidental lightning strikes, they don’t even reach the statistical power or significance necessary to speculate intelligently about the animal’s risk to the public.
Still, residents’ irrational fear of these peaceful but ferocious-looking animals persists. Part of this fear is the legacy of our evolutionary wiring that is no longer adaptive; part of it comes from the distorted perception of risk amplified by the media, and part of it stems from the skewed battle in our mental processing where instinctual thinking – impervious to statistics and data – overpowers slower, more rational reasoning. Finally, intentionally or not, the very precautions and warnings about bears provided to the public by the BC Conservation Office imprint the notion of danger as associated with black bears on the minds of people.
The synergy of these factors solidifies the public’s distorted perception of black bears and, in turn, drives wildlife policies. People might still feel unsafe, even in the absence of danger, and it is the reaction to this irrational feeling, rather than a true understanding of risk, that prompts an annual slaughter of bears. Lethal wildlife management becomes thus a tool to assuage “feelings”, even if its rationale runs counter to the objective data. In reality, people – children, especially – are more likely to experience trauma from witnessing a bear being shot or taken away to be shot than from the peaceful coexistence with bears.
And yet, once again, the wildlife management tries to project the veneer of impartiality, dispassion, and scientific objectivity. The trappings of technocratic expertise and professionalism – organizational structure, manuals, uniforms – are employed to dispel a notion of bias or suspicions of pandering to interest groups. They are also used to contrast the emotionalism of compassionate conservation with the supposed value-free approach of the BC Conservation Officer Service.
Of course, such a managerial approach is anything but value-free. It cannot be. Neither in this case nor any other. Indeed, it’s high time to stop arguing the false value-free vs. value-laden dichotomy and recognize, instead, two wildlife value orientation dimensions: a protection-use orientation and a wildlife appreciation orientation. In the former, wildlife is considered primarily as a utilitarian resource. The protection-use orientation approves of hunting, managing wildlife populations through predator control, and other lethal methods (e.g., killing “nuisance” urban wildlife, wildlife trapping). Altogether, it privileges human-centred values.
On the other hand, the wildlife appreciation orientation rejects both consequentialism and anthropocentrism. It opposes the view that wild animals should be managed in ways that primarily benefit humans or that sacrificing individual animals to ensure the persistence of sufficient population sizes is the only benchmark worth pursuing. The wildlife appreciation orientation counters such utilitarianism with compassion for individual animals and focuses on suffering and sentience. And it finds support in the science of trans-species psychology and numerous neurobehavioural studies that show a greater similarity than previously imagined between humans and other animals. As a result, following the Kantian view of human beings as an end in themselves and not as a means to an end, the wildlife appreciation orientation treats animals as having their inherent value. This value cannot be a means to achieve a separate value (e.g., an increase in ungulate population), nor can it be a means to gratify others (e.g., recreational hunting). Coincidently, this is also what an increasing segment of the population is beginning to believe. A new poll, conducted by Mario Canseco Research and commissioned by The Fur-Bearers, found 87 percent of those polled in British Columbia disagree with hunting or trapping wolves to increase ungulate populations for hunters, and 91 percent disagree with “recreational” killing of wolves.
Overall, therefore, in our dealings with wildlife, it is one set of values against the other. Both sides can refer to science for support, and neither can disentangle itself from subjectivity. Wildlife management tries hard but, of course, it fails. Consequentialism and scientific reasoning have been adopted by wildlife management to project the notion that is unattainable in the area where conflicting interests and beliefs always intersect. Impartiality is an illusion. Values, biases, and emotions inform the mindsets of all the actors, regardless of their position. This is how we, humans, make our supposedly reasoned decisions. Not despite emotions but because of them. Science tells us that. Real science. The only question that remains to be answered is which values we should embrace and how much we should care about suffering and sentience.
