Environmental Ethics

Ronald Sandler, “Conservation Philosophy After the End of ‘Nature’?: The Case for Ameliorating Rather than Eliminating ‘Nature’,” 2024. Environmental Ethics.

Open access preprint available here.

Abstract: The concept ‘nature’ and the role it has played in conservation philosophy have been criticized on theoretical and ethical grounds. Theoretical critiques include that it is ambiguous and implies a false human-nature dichotomy and/or human exceptionalism. Ethical critiques include that it has been used to justify unjust conservation practices, such as colonial erasure and displacing Indigenous and local peoples from their lands. More recently, the concept has been criticized on the grounds that under conditions of high rate and magnitude anthropogenic change it is not reliable for guiding effective conservation decision-making. Do these critiques imply that theorists and practitioners ought to develop a conservation philosophy without ‘nature’? Drawing from work by Steve Vogel and Sally Haslanger, I advocate taking an ameliorative approach to ‘nature’, rather than abandoning the concept altogether. ‘Nature’ is not an ontologically privileged category that has special moral or value properties, but sufficiently ameliorated it nevertheless has a crucial role to play in the future of conservation philosophy.

Clare Palmer and Ronald Sandler, “Mapping the Ethics Landscape for the Use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) in Conservation,” 2025. Journal of Applied Animal Ethics Research.

Open access preprint available here.

Abstract: This paper aims to identify the values and ethical issues at stake when assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) are used in animals for conservation purposes. We outline key concerns about individual animal welfare and lives, and the central conservation values that underpin and justify the use of ARTs for conservation purposes. We then discuss three questions that might help to guide ethical development and use of ARTs in a conservation context: Is the goal of the project involving ARTs for conservation well justified? Can the goal of the project be accomplished responsibly using ARTs? Is the project, and the use of ARTs in it, overall desirable? Decisions to use ARTs for conservation are ethically complex and not amenable to blanket ethical approval or disapproval; they will, instead, require detailed empirically and normatively grounded evaluation on a case-by-case basis, which can be guided by these questions.

Ron Sandler, Clare Palmer. The Emerging Movement Against Wild Animal Suffering and its Potential Implications for Conservation. 2025. Oryx – The International Journal of Conservation.

Abstract: Historically, conservation has focused on species, ecological communities, systems and processes, rather than on individual animals. Even among advocates for compassionate conservation, the focus on animal welfare or animal rights only relates to conservation activities. However, in recent years the idea of managing ecosystems primarily to improve wild animal welfare has been gaining traction among animal ethicists and animal welfare researchers. Managing ecosystems for animal welfare is generally antithetical to management to support ecological and evolutionary processes, since essential features of those processes, such as predation, privation and competition, are sources of animal suffering. Our aim in this paper is not to defend the proposal that ecosystem management should focus primarily on improving wild animal welfare. It is, rather, to situate this proposal in relation to concerns about wild animal welfare expressed by the public and conservation biologists; to connect it to the rise of subjectivist theories of animal welfare; to introduce the ethical arguments used to support elevating the importance of individual wild animals; to explain the advocacy context; to outline potential implications for conservation; and to review critiques of taking a wild animal welfare focus in ecosystem management.