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Clifford Waters and the Death of a Yellowstone Bison

photograph of bison on the road in Yellowstone National Park

In late May of this year, Clifford Waters pled guilty to one count of “of feeding, touching, teasing, frightening or intentionally disturbing wildlife” in Yellowstone National Park. The punishment for the crime was a fine of $1000, half of which went to Yellowstone’s wildlife fund. Waters was charged with the crime after he helped a newborn bison cross the Lamar River when the animal had become separated from his mother and the rest of his herd.

Waters was unaware that his act of assistance could lead to the young bison’s rejection by the herd. Unfortunately, that is indeed what happened. The bison survived the incident but was later euthanized by park staff because of his hazardous habit of approaching cars and people at the park. Representatives of the park claim they could not remove the animal to a sanctuary due to a local law prohibiting the removal of bison from the park except for use in scientific research or slaughter.

Many argue that it is difficult to see how justice was done or welfare protected in any aspect of this case. It is important, of course, for many reasons, that human beings do not interfere too much in the lives of wildlife. When humans feed or otherwise intervene in the lives of wild animals, it can be dangerous for the animals. In this case such behavior led the calf to be socially ostracized.

Behaviors that are safe for humans may not be safe for other animals, and foods that may be healthy for human consumption may cause serious health problems for other animals. Human behavior also often leads to the destruction of animal habitats which can put animal lives and social structures at risk. Too much interaction can also be dangerous for humans. In addition to the violence to which an animal might resort if they feel threatened, if an animal becomes too comfortable with humans, there may be a higher incidence of zoonotic disease spread and disruption of natural ecosystems. For all of these reasons, it may be important to have laws discouraging people from engaging in potentially harmful interactions with wild animals. Bison, in particular, are known to gore humans when humans get too close.

In many ways, this is a case study in how we understand and apply philosophical principles related to moral responsibility. Some are concerned about this feature of the human element of the story. It is true that some humans interact with non-human animals in reckless and irresponsible ways. Humans often risk their lives to get selfies with animals, causing the animals to feel threatened and to respond with defensive, often violent behavior. Consider, for example, a 27-year old Indian man who was trampled to death while trying to snap a selfie with a wild elephant or the man in China who was killed when dragged into the ocean by a 1.5 ton walrus with whom the man was trying to get a picture.

These are both tragedies, but these victims also had very different motivations from Waters who was attempting to save the bison. Waters wasn’t acting in his own self-interest. He was not treating the bison as a tool for his own entertainment. He was exhibiting empathy for the creature and put himself in harm’s way to attempt to rescue it. His behavior was evidence of virtues of character such as courage as compassion. Park staff and prosecutors could have made the decision to look the other way in this case given the circumstances, but they opted not to do so.

This decision strikes many as an injustice. When we hold people responsible for their actions, it should be in light of a guilty, reckless, or negligent mental state. We shouldn’t punish people for being kind. Still, we need these kinds of external sanctions to prevent people from doing harmful things even when they don’t know they’re harmful. These sanctions are likely to deter the individuals involved from engaging in such behavior again and also deter other people from engaging in high-risk behavior with animals in the future. That said, the fact that these laws can serve as deterrents doesn’t entail that they should be used in every case. This might have been a case that called for some discretion.

Those who made the decision might argue that these laws are in place to help the animals. Under other circumstances, this may seem plausible, but in light of the way the rest of this story played out, that explanation is hard to swallow. Animals at Yellowstone are held responsible for their behavior in cases in which it is not possible for them to have “guilty minds.” Bison aren’t committing premeditated murder, for instance, when they gore a human being approaching their calf. Moreover, it’s not reasonable to hold animals accountable with their very lives for “nuisance” behavior when it is humans who ultimately caused that behavior; humans are encroaching on the habitats of these animals and park staff are aware that it was human behavior that led to the bison’s behavior in this particular case. Human colonizers nearly caused the outright extinction of bison. Putting them in a vulnerable position creates a care-based duty to protect them.

It is safe to say that bison aren’t protected when they are euthanized. Laws that prohibit transfer of individual animals to sanctuaries ought to be re-evaluated. Current policy is anthropocentric — we can remove animals from the park only to serve certain kinds of human interests — they can be removed for slaughter or for use in scientific research. This is, in part, to prevent the spread of brucellosis which can spread to deer, elk, and domestic cattle. In recent years, bison who have been certified brucellosis free have been transported to tribal reservations. This may sound like an appropriate response — tribal members have historical and cultural relationships with bison. However, Yellowstone’s bison conservation website explains what happens to bison on tribal lands: “We transfer captured bison to Tribes who transport them to slaughterhouses for processing.” The word “processing” in this case is, of course, a euphemism. It makes no difference to a bison who is doing the killing, the result is the same — the deprivation of future experiences. The bison who was euthanized in this case wasn’t even deemed eligible for the tribal program. He became a danger to people who didn’t follow posted rules and paid with his life.

Our judgments about the appropriateness and severity of punishments should be based on defensible reasoning about free will, moral responsibility, and the nature of wrongdoing. Should humans be punished for extending empathy toward animals? Should animals be executed for feeling threatened when humans come too close? Does it make sense to punish someone for inadvertently harming an animal while at the same time routinely shipping those same animals off to be killed or experimented on?

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Are Self-Spreading Vaccines the Solution to Potential Future Pandemics?

photograph of wild rabbits in the grass

Human beings are engaging in deforestation on a massive scale. As they do so, they come into contact with populations of animals that were previously living their lives unmolested in the forest. Humans are also increasingly gathering large numbers of animals in small spaces to raise for food. Both of these conditions are known to hasten the spread of disease. For instance, COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease, which means that it has the capacity to jump from one animal species to another. Many experts believe that the virus jumped from horseshoe bats, then to an intermediary species, before finally spreading to human beings. As a result of human encroachment into wild spaces, experts anticipate that there will likely be rapid spread of other zoonotic diseases in the near future.

In response to this concern, multiple teams of scientists are working on developing “self-spreading vaccines.” The technology to do so has existed for over 20 years. In 1999, scientists conducted an experiment designed to vaccinate wild rabbits against two particularly deadly rabbit diseases: rabbit hemorrhagic disease and myxomatosis. The process, both in 1999 and today, involves “recombinant viruses,” which means that strands of DNA from different organisms are broken and recombined. In the case of the rabbit vaccine, a protein from the rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus was inserted it into the myxoma virus that is known to spread rapidly among rabbit populations. The resulting virus was injected into roughly 70 rabbits. A little over a month later, 56% of the rabbits in the population had developed antibodies for both viruses.

Today, scientists are pursuing self-spreading vaccine technology for Ebola, Bovine Tuberculosis, and Lassa Virus. The research is currently being conducted on species-specific viruses rather than on those that have the capacity to jump from one species to another. However, as the research progresses, it could potentially provide a mechanism for stopping a potential pandemic before it starts.

Critics of this kind of program believe that we should adopt the Precautionary Principle, which says that we should refrain from developing potentially harmful technology until we know to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty how the technology will work and what the consequences will be. We do not yet know how these vaccines would function in the wild and how they might potentially affect ecosystems. It may be the case that, without these viruses active in the population, some species will become invasive and end up threatening the biodiversity of the given ecosystem.

On a related note, some argue that we should not use wild animals as test subjects for this new technology. Instead of encroaching further into the land occupied by these animals and then injecting them with vaccines that have not been tested, we should instead try to roll back the environmental damage that we have done. These critics raise similar concerns to those that are raised by critics of geoengineering. When a child messes up their room, we don’t simply allow them to relocate to the bedroom across the hall — we insist that they clean up their mess. Instead of developing increasingly intrusive technology to prevent disease spread from one species to another, we should simply leave wild animals alone and do what we can to plant trees and restore the lost biodiversity in those spaces. If that means that we need to make radical changes to our food systems in order to make such a strategy feasible, then that’s what we need to do.

In the case of genetically engineered crops, there have been some unanticipated consequences for local ecosystems. There have been instances of “transgene escape,” which means that some of the genetic features of an engineered organism are spread to other plants in the local ecosystem. In the case of crops that have been genetically modified to be pesticide resistant, this has led to the emergence of certain “superweeds” that are difficult to eliminate because they, too, are resistant to pesticides. That said, most of the soy and corn grown in the United States are crops that have been genetically modified to be pesticide resistant with very few negative consequences. Nevertheless, in the case of crops, we are dealing with life that is not sentient and cannot suffer. When we make use of these vaccines, we are delivering genetically modified deadly diseases to populations of animals without fully understanding what the consequences might be or if there will be a similar kind of transgene escape that has more serious side effects.

In response to this concern, advocates of the technology argue that we don’t have time to press pause or to change strategy. Deforestation has happened, and we need to be prepared to deal with the potential consequences. The COVID-19 pandemic had devastating impacts on human health and happiness. In addition to the death and suffering it caused, it also wreaked economic havoc on many people. It turned up the temperature of political battles and caused the ruin of many friendships and family units. Advocates of self-spreading vaccines argue that we should do everything in our power to prevent something like this from happening again.

Advocates of the policy also argue that these vaccines would benefit not only human beings, but wild animals as well. They could potentially eradicate serious diseases among animal populations. This could lead to a significant reduction in suffering for these animals. As a practical matter, wild animals can be very difficult to catch, so relying on traditional vaccination methods can prove quite challenging. This new method would only involve capturing a handful of animals, who could then spread the vaccine to the rest of the population.

Some object to this strategy because of a more general concern about the practice of genetic engineering. Those who offer in principle critiques of the process are often concerned about the hubris it demonstrates or worry that human beings are “playing God.” In response, advocates of genetic technology argue that we modify the natural world for our purposes all the time. We construct roads, build hospitals, and transplant organs, for example. The fact that the world does not exist in a natural state unaltered by human beings is only a bad state of affairs if it brings about negative consequences.

This is just one debate in environmental and biomedical ethics that motivates reflection on our new relation to the natural world. What is it to be environmentally virtuous? Is it ethical to use developing technology to modify the natural world to be just the way that human beings want it to be? Ought we to solve problems we have caused by altering the planet and the life on it even further? Or, instead, does respect for nature require us to restore what we have destroyed?

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Should We Intervene to Help Wild Animals?

photograph of deer in the snow

The parasitic larvae of the New World screwworm consume the flesh of their living hosts, causing pain which is “utterly excruciating, so much so that infested people often require morphine before doctors can even examine the wound.” At any given time, countless animals suffer this excruciating pain. But not in North America – not anymore. Human beings have eliminated the New World screwworm from North America. This was done to protect livestock herds, but innumerable wild animals also benefit. In fact, eliminating the screwworm from North America has had “no obvious ecological effects.”

All of us should be happy that wild animals in North America no longer suffer the screwworm’s torments. I argued in an earlier post that if something has conscious experiences, then that entity matters morally. Suppose some stray dog experiences cold, hunger, and disease before dying at two years old. This is a bad thing, and if some person had instead helped the dog and given it a nice life, that would have been a good thing. Why is what happens to the dog bad? Surely the answer is something like: because the dog has a mind, and feelings, and these events cause the dog to experience suffering, and prevent the dog from experiencing happiness. Why would the person’s helping the dog be good? Surely the answer is something like: because helping the dog helps it avoid suffering and premature death, and allows it to flourish and enjoy life. But then, the exact same thing can be said about wild animals who do not suffer from the screwworm because humans drove it out.

So we have helped many wild animals by eliminating the New World screwworm, and we should be happy about this. The question then becomes: what if we intentionally intervened in the natural world to help wild animals even further? In South America, they still suffer from the New World screwworm. And they suffer from many other things all over the world: other parasites, disease, starvation, the elements, predation, etc. In principle, there may be quite a lot we can do to alleviate all this. We could eliminate other harmful parasites. We could distribute oral vaccines through bait. (We already do this to combat rabies among wild animals – again, this is for self-interested reasons, so that they don’t serve as a reservoir of diseases which can affect humans. But we could expand this for the sake of the animals themselves.) In the future, perhaps we will even be able to do things which sound like goofy sci-fi stuff now. Perhaps, say, we could genetically reengineer predators into herbivores, while also distributing oral contraceptives via bait to keep this from causing a catastrophic population explosion.

If we can do these things and thereby improve the condition of wild animals, I think we should. In fact, I think it is extremely important that we do so. There are trillions of wild vertebrates, and perhaps quintillions of wild invertebrates. We don’t know exactly where the cut-off for the ability to suffer is. But because there is so much suffering among wild animals, and because there are so many of them, it seems entirely plausible that the overwhelming majority of suffering in the world occurs in the wild. Since this suffering is bad, it is very important that we reduce it, insofar as we can.

Of course, we’d better make sure we know what we’re doing. Otherwise, our attempts to help might, say, upset the delicate balance of some ecosystem and make things worse. But this is not a reason to ignore the topic. It is instead a reason to investigate it very thoroughly, so that we know what we’re doing. The field of welfare biology investigates these questions, and organizations like the Wild Animal Initiative conduct research into how we can effectively help wild animals. It may turn out, of course, that some problems are just beyond our ability to address. But we won’t know which ones those are without doing research like this.

Many people react negatively to the idea that we should intervene to help wild animals. Sometimes they suggest that what happens in the natural world is none of our business, that we have no right to meddle in the affairs of wild animal communities. But aiding wild animal communities is merely doing what we would want others to do for our own communities, were they afflicted with similar problems. If my community suffered widespread disease, starvation, infant mortality, parasitism, attacks from predatory animals, etc. and had no way to address any of these problems on its own, I would be quite happy for outsiders who had the ability to help to step in.

Others worry that intervention would undermine the value of nature itself. They think the untamed savagery of the natural world is part of its grandeur and majesty, and that “domesticating” the natural world by making it less harsh would decrease its value. But, as the philosopher David Pearce has noted, this is plausibly due to status quo bias: an emotional bias in favor of however things currently happen to be.

Suppose we lived in a world where humans had greatly reduced disease, starvation, parasitism, etc. among wild animals, thereby allowing a much higher proportion of wild animals to live long, flourishing lives. Does anyone really think that people in that world would want to put those things back, so as to restore the majesty and grandeur of nature? Surely not! And anyway, I am not at all sure that improving the condition of wild animals would make them less grand or majestic. If someone, say, finds some baby birds whose mother has died and cares for them, are they making nature less grand or majestic – even a little bit?

Still others pose a religious objection: they worry that intervening in nature would mean arrogantly “playing God,” interfering in the natural order God established because we think we can do better. But we already use technology to protect ourselves, and our domestic animals, from natural threats – disease, parasites, predators, etc. And if anything, people think God wants us to do that, likes it when we express love for others by helping them avoid suffering. Why should the situation with wild animals be different? In fact, in this paper, I gave a theological argument in favor of intervening to help wild animals. I note that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have traditionally viewed humans as having been given a special authority over the world by God, and then argue that, if anything, this gives us a special obligation to exercise this authority in helping wild animals.

So: we should do what we can to help wild animals. As I’ve said, there is quite a lot of work to be done to figure out what is the best way to do this. But that just makes that work more urgent.

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Reintroducing the Gray Wolf

photograph of two wolves stalking in the snow

Earlier this month, the citizens of Colorado passed Proposition 114, a measure that reintroduces gray wolves into the local ecosystem. The measure involves a plan to reintegrate the wolves by the end of 2023. It passed with 50.4% of votes in support and 49.6% in opposition; it was quite controversial. Some citizens of Colorado view the proposal as a way to honor the promises we made when we passed the Endangered Species Act. Others are concerned about the potential threats posed by reintroducing a predator into the community.

The story of the disappearance of wolves from their native habitats is the story of human western expansion and colonialism. Wolves didn’t simply disappear all on their own. During this time, many people hunted recklessly and decimated populations of elk, deer, and bison. The result was that the food source for predators like gray wolves became limited. Some populations of wolves turned to eating livestock to survive. In response, humans killed every last gray wolf in Colorado. In fact, they killed virtually every gray wolf in the contiguous United States.

As time progressed, humans stopped hunting deer and elk at the same rates that they once did. At this point, however, wolves, the natural predators of these species, no longer existed. This imbalance fundamentally changed ecosystems. Deer populations exploded and ended up harming forests in various ways. Forestry departments embarked on deer-culling missions — the practice of killing deer in order to keep ecosystems and the other living beings that participate in them in some kind of equilibrium.

The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973. It required the Federal Wildlife Service to, if possible, restore animals that have been eliminated from ecosystems. All species of wolves in the contiguous United States were listed as endangered so, in keeping with the act, the FWS was obligated to restore them. In some areas they satisfied this obligation. For example, in 1995 the federal government reintroduced gray wolves into Yellowstone National Park. The findings in Yellowstone suggest that reintroduction of wolves into an ecosystem appears to lead to greater biodiversity in that system. The carcasses of the animals on which wolves feed also serve as a source of food for scavenger species.

Some concerns with Proposition 114 are procedural. Many felt that the issue should not have been up to voters to decide. Reintroduction of gray wolves will impact some areas of the state more than others. Critics are concerned that those who voted in favor of reintroduction are not the people who will have to face the consequences. For example, some rural voters argue that it was urban voters who dictated the trajectory of the vote. Urban voters won’t have to deal with the wolves.

Farmers and cattle ranchers are concerned about the impacts that the presence of wolves might have on their livestock. Ranchers are concerned about the well-being of their animals. Despite the fact that they are raising them to be slaughtered, ranchers would like to be able to allow cattle to freely graze without concerns that they will fall prey to wolves. They feel it is their obligation to protect their livestock up until the time when they send them to CAFOS and slaughterhouses, and the reintroduction of wolves into the ecosystem makes satisfying that duty more difficult. What’s more, because gray wolves are endangered, if a rancher actually witnesses a wolf threatening their cattle, they cannot kill or harass the wolf without risking jail time or a $100,000 fine. That said, there is no reason to believe that scaring the wolf off would expose the rancher to the threat of fine or jail time.

Another pressing concern is that cattle are an investment. To make a living, ranchers need that investment to pay off. If their animals die before they can be sold, the ranchers lose money. In response to this concern, however, advocates of the measure point out that it includes a commitment to offer compensation to ranchers who lose livestock to wolves.

Many ranchers also consider these kinds of environmental policies to be an existential threat to their way of life. They claim that the environmental movement, and conservationism in particular, needs rural allies. Some rural dwellers feel that urban environmentalists are not looking out for the interests of farmers and ranchers and as a result they feel little motivation to cooperate on issues related to public lands.

There are also concerns for the deer and elk populations who will be hunted by the wolves. When we reintroduce a predator into an ecosystem, we increase the extent to which that predator’s prey will experience fear. We also increase the likelihood that deer, elk, and other potential wolf prey will experience more painful deaths than they otherwise might have. It may be true that some of these animals will ultimately be killed by humans as part of wildlife management efforts, but deaths by these hunters are more likely to be fear and pain free.

There is also a metaethical question in play here. Do we have moral obligations only to individual, sentient beings who live in and have experiences of the world? Or do we have moral obligations to species, abstract groupings that are conceptual and not sentient?

Advocates of Proposition 114 argue that we have a moral obligation to protect endangered species. Arguments for this conclusion take several different forms. One is that we have a moral obligation to rectify harms and injustices that human beings have brought about. To the extent that wolves ever did humans any harm, they did so because of the changes that we made to their ecosystem. Advocates of Proposition 114 argue that it was unjust for us to kill off wolves en masse, so we now have an obligation to restore what we have diminished. Human beings are responsible for mass extinction events, and we need to take responsibility for that. The form that this responsibility takes should be more than feeling guilt and mourning the loss. We should actually do something about it, in those cases in which we still can.

Some thinkers, like ecologist and conservationist Aldo Leopold, have argued that species have intrinsic value. The continued existence of any given species is testament to the fact that it has endured the harsh tests of time and the ravages of nature. When the story of a species is brought to an abrupt end unnecessarily by humans, it’s a great tragedy.

Still others argue that it is best for ecosystems to manage themselves naturally. They contend that the equilibrium established by nature is usually more sustainable than a balance that human beings attempt to artificially establish. The reintroduction of the wolf renews the potential that the ecosystem has of attaining that natural balance. This is better, in the long run, for the ecosystem, and ecosystems are worth preserving.

At the end of the day, this case lays bare a fundamental tension in our country that is about more than just gray wolf populations. Environmental change, and what many would refer to as environmental justice, requires people to adapt their lifestyles. Making these changes is easy enough for some, but it is much more difficult for others. Some people’s livelihood, and, indeed, some people’s very identity, is tied up in practices that will be dramatically altered or even eliminated by efforts to protect and preserve the environment and the living creature that inhabit it. It’s no wonder the country is deeply divided.

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Economics and Sustainability in the Overfishing of Bluefin Tuna

A recent auction of bluefin tuna at the Tsukiji market in Tokyo sparked recurring discussions over the environmental and economic effects that overfishing and big tuna businesses are putting on local areas and fisheries. This came as a 212-kilogram fish sold at Tsukiji for 74.2 million yen (or the equivalent $64,200), which per piece would cost over 25 times the 400 yen usually charged at the bidder’s restaurants.

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