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Environmental Ethics Programs and Initiatives Research Projects 06.11.26

Technology, Animals, and the Environment

Animal lives are permeated by technology. Many animals live in human built environments or habitats that have been transformed by our use of technologies. We use technologies to study animals. We test technologies on animals. We provide care to animals with technologies. We control and kill animals with technology. This project conducts ethics and value analyses and evaluations of animal-related technologies and use cases. It focuses on new and emerging technologies, such as biotechnologies, assisted reproduction technologies, and AI enabled interspecies communication technologies.

Project Outputs

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.

Sandler, R. (2026). The case for deference in Ecosystem Management. The Monist, 109(2), 124–140. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onag001 

Abstract: Several theorists have argued that ecological systems and wildlife populations should be engineered to improve wild animal welfare, promote justice for wild animals, or maximize resources for people. These views are transformational, rather than deferential towards ecological and evolutionary processes. In this paper I advocate for deference in ecosystem management on environmental values, species/organism impartiality, and humility grounds. I defend deferential views against critiques from proponents of transformation to improve animal welfare, and argue that macroscale anthropogenic change, including climate change, strengthens rather than undermines the case for deference. Although not a comprehensive argument against transformation in general or transformation to improve wild animal welfare in particular, the considerations that support deference generate a substantial presumption against transformationalism.


Thresher, A., Wells, M., Sandler, R., Baylon, R., & Hernandez, R. (2025). A Non-Ideal Argument Against FBOMS (Final Barred Owl Management Strategy)?
Ethics, Policy & Environment, 28(2), 181–184. DOI: 10.1080/21550085.2025.2555691
Abstract: In ‘Should We Kill One Owl to Save Another?’ Jay Odenbaugh argues that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should begin to execute their Final Barred Owl Management Strategy (FBOMS). Per FBOMS, up to 470,000 barred owls will be killed over thirty years in an effort to preserve the endangered population of northern spotted owls in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest United States. Odenbaugh has previously argued that the preservation of the northern spotted owl population itself is not a good enough reason to kill the barred owls. But he points out that more is at stake than just the continuation of the northern spotted owl. The legal protections for an endangered species listed under the US Endangered Species Act, such as the northern spotted owl, include protections for their critical habitat. So, efforts to protect the northern spotted owl population will also, incidentally, protect some old-growth forests of the PacificNorthwest. Odenbaugh takes the protection of such forests to be sufficient to justify killing the barred owls due to the role such forests may have in sequestering carbon dioxide and thereby limiting the harmful effects of climate change. In doing so, he makes an argument based on expected values – that the harms to the barred owls are out-weighed by the benefits of saving the old growth forests. Odenbaugh’s argument leans into ‘non-ideal’ philosophy and the possibility that undercurrent economic, legal and ecological conditions, the only thing protecting these forests is the continued existence of the endangered northern spotted owl. We suggest that while real-world circumstances should play an important part in determining conservation actions, in this case, the connection between the conservation of the northern spotted owl and the mitigation of climate change is sufficiently contingent and uncertain (especially when taking a non-ideal approach) that what course of action the expected value favors is unclear. Under such circumstances, other normative factors become more salient, at least some of which do not favor FBOMS.

Sandler, R. L., Moses, L., & Wisely, S. M. (2021). An ethical analysis of cloning for genetic rescue: Case study of the black-footed ferret. Biological Conservation, 257, 109118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109118 

Abstract: Genetic rescue is a management tool used to decrease genetic load and increase fitness. The technique relies on the addition of unique genomes into a population’s gene pool, but when no living candidates are available for translocation, preserved genetic resources may be an option. Biobanks are a source of cryopreserved material, including fibroblasts which have the potential to be used as source genetic material, but would require the use of cloning to create a living individual with the desired genome. An ethical analysis of this emerging technology in conservation is necessary to help determine when cloning is justified and to identify issues that need to be addressed in order that the management action is approached responsibly. We provide a framework for ethical analysis of conservation cloning for genetic rescue by considering the goals, means and desirability of conservation cloning. We then conduct a preliminary analysis of the use of conservation cloning for the genetic rescue of an endangered species, the black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes), as a case study. The analysis generates several recommendations for moving toward ethically responsible introduction of cloning into black-footed ferret recovery efforts.

Project Leads

Ronald Sandler is a professor of philosophy and Director of the Ethics Institute at Northeastern University. He is author of Environmental Ethics: Theory in Practice (Oxford University Press), The Ethics of Species (Cambridge University Press), Character and Environment (Columbia University Press), and Food Ethics (Routledge). He has conducted research and published extensively on conservation philosophy, biotechnology, and environmental ethics. One part of this work has been developing frameworks for evaluating particular conservation biotechnology applications, such as cloning, genetic modification, gene drives and stem cells, often in collaboration with practitioners. Another part has been exploring the significance of mass extinction for conservation philosophy. A third part has been reassessing core conservation concepts and associated evaluative frameworks under conditions of rapid anthropogenic change.

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