Species justice and harm to animals - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 128

Others argue that animals have an intrinsic right to life and as an
expression of this, to reproduce (Coetzee, 2008; see also Francione,
2008). The implication is that we should let 'survival' be up to Nature, a
principle that makes sense within specific social and ecological contexts
(Anderson, 2004), but not in others. This generalised stance is part of
the basis for resistance to the idea of the badger cull in the United
Kingdom, a strategy prompted by the transmission of illness within
and from the badger population. Yet, this moral basis for inaction is
countered by farmers' arguments that allowing infected animals to live
is itself equally morally suspect. Enticott (2011: 206) refers to farmers
rhetorically asking:
'Why should my cows be allowed to die from bTB when
wild badgers are allowed to remain free? If conservationists
cared about animal welfare then they would not complain
about a badger cull because it would improve badger
welfare.'
Clearly there are many sides to each story when it comes to human
decisions regarding when and how to intervene in regards to feral
and sick animals. Again, this makes an absolutist position on these
issues problematic at the level of complicated real-world problems and
decisions. Animals have rights, but which and how these are enforced are
variable depending upon natural and social contexts (Anderson, 2004).
As has been observed by some writers (Cazaux, 1999), consideration
of human practices that are detrimental to the wellbeing of animals,
such as loss and fragmentation of habitat, tend to focus on the effects
regarding animal populations of a certain species (matters pertaining to
the threat of extinction). Less attention is paid to the consequences
of broad trends to the wellbeing of animals as individual subjects . It is
not only the recalcitrant and uncontrollable wolves who may end up
being killed. The logic of species protection, over and above respect for
the individual animal, means that in some instances animals are killed
for no apparent reason or justification. In Norway, for example, efforts
to protect the endangered species of polar fox, has nonetheless been
accompanied by the killing of individual creatures which were guilty
of the 'crime' of not fitting into the existing breeding programme (see
Sollund, 2012b). Their deaths served no apparent purpose, but their
value (or lack thereof) was reflected in the actions taken to put them
down. Respect and acknowledgement of the right of these individual
creatures to live is confounded by the human emphasis on collective
survival.