Species justice and harm to animals - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 112

seen to bear the responsibility for the demise of certain species, and
law enforcement action is constructed accordingly.
In other cases, however, the problem is systemic and global, with
major implications for possible remedies. The polar bear, for example,
is quickly disappearing. Climate change is the key reason in that it is
indirectly causing weight loss among polar bears due to the loss of its
sea ice habitat because the ice starts to thaw earlier and earlier each
spring, cutting off access to traditional feeding grounds (it doesn't eat,
so it gets thin!). In certain parts of the Arctic, the average female now
weighs only 225 kg, which is 25 per cent less than two decades ago.
If this trend continues, the species will be lost, forever (EEA, 2010).
Insofar as the structural conditions which give rise to the threatened
habitat are not addressed, the solution is to ultimately accept extinction
in the wild but to try to ensure the survival of captive individuals in
human-prepared 'homes'. Survival, here, is on human terms, or not at all.
Ironically, it is the laws that humans design to protect certain species
that may, in effect, put them most at jeopardy. For example, measures
put in place to prevent the illegal trade in endangered species can
make that species even more attractive to criminal syndicates or
private collectors, since it confirms their scarcity (and thus increases
the commercial and collectible 'value') of the species in question.
The damage that is manifest in phenomena such as over-fishing and
destruction of habitat (both of which may be legally undertaken) also
affects the subsequent market prices for the commodity in question.
Scarcity is a major motivator for illegal as well as legal forays into
particular kinds of harvesting and production activity. The losers are
animals and their environments.
From the animal's perspective, rather than an anthropocentric
viewpoint, it matters little to their welfare whether or not the harm
being done to them is legal or illegal. Either way they suffer. Fishing,
for example, is associated with a wide range of potentially harmful
activity. Legally provided fishing, such as aquaculture and the 'scientific'
harvesting of whales, can engender great harm.
The essential question, from an animal rights and welfare point of
view, is 'what harm is there in fishing?' When considering the many
different types of fishing it becomes apparent that harm can stem
from and be associated with many different kinds of practice. Fishing
for profit can be distinguished from fishing for subsistence, and each
of these can be distinguished from fishing for pleasure. Yet each kind
of fishing entails different kinds of threat, risk and potential harm.
Table 4.1 provides a brief outline of different kinds of fishing, and the
activities related to each that can be described as illegal, criminal and