Abstract

Though the conservation community has long premised its moral foundations on consequentialist thinking and has embraced a dualistic worldview severing reason from emotion, the conservation community has erred by failing to addressor even acknowledgethe limitations of these fundamental tenets. This failure reemerged in 2015 when a wealthy hunter killed an African Lion named Cecil for a trophy, in turn, prompting a debate within the conservation community about the appropriateness of killing Cecil. A number of conservationists: (1) defended such instances of trophy hunting on the basis that money generated by trophy hunting can support conservation and (2) ridiculed as irrational those who oppose such instances of killing in the name of conservation. We suggest this response by the conservation community represents common, but problematic, ethical reasoning. We offer a critique of both the ethical underpinning of such reasoning and the assumptions about the relationship between reason and emotion. We urge ethical and social psychological maturation on behalf of the conservation community.

Keywords

Animal Welfare; Cecil the Lion; conservation; consequentialism; emotions; environmental ethics; moral dilemma; trophy hunting

Published in

Conservation Letters
2016, Volume: 9, number: 4, pages: 302-306
Publisher: WILEY-BLACKWELL

SLU Authors

• Chapron, Guillaume

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12232

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/80701