It’s widely agreed that animal pain matters morally – that we shouldn’t, for instance, starve our animal companions, and that we should provide medical care to sick or injured agricultural animals, and not only because it benefits us to do so. But do we have the same moral responsibilities towards wild animals? Should we feed them if they are starving, and intervene to prevent them from undergoing other forms of suffering, for instance from predation? Using an example that includes both (...) wild and domesticated animals, I outline two contrasting ways of thinking about our moral responsibilities with respect to assisting animals that are apparently in need. One approach is based entirely around animals’ capacities; the other takes context and historical relations into account as well. While not attempting to adjudicate between these views, I’ll point out the advantages and difficulties of both. (shrink)

In this article, Palmer provides a clear survey of positions on killing domestic animals in animal shelters. She argues that there are three ways of understanding the killing that occurs in animal shelters: consequentialism, rights based, and relation based. She considers the relationship of humans and domesticated animals that leads to their killing in animal shelters as well as providing an ethical assessment of the practice.

Should we help wild animals suffering negative impacts from anthropogenic climate change? It follows from diverse ethical positions that we should, although this idea troubles defenders of wildness value. One already existing climate threat to wild animals, especially in the Arctic, is the disruption of food chains. I take polar bears as my example here: Should we help starving polar bears? If so, how? A recent scientific paper suggests that as bears’ food access worsens due to a changing climate, we (...) should consider supplementary feeding. Feeding starving bears could meet ethical obligations to help wild animals suffering from climate change. But supplementary feeding may also cause harms, and lead to park-like management of some bear populations – a concern for those who care about the value of wildness. While this situation is in many ways intractable, I’ll make a tentative suggestion of a possible way forward for wildlife managers. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationships between Christianity, Englishness, and ideas about the southern English landscape in the writings of the 1930s and 1940s rural commentator, H.J. Massingham. The paper begins by looking in general terms at the conjunction of religious and national identities in the context of national landscapes before moving on to consider in more detail one particular instance of this in the writing of H.J. Massingham. Massingham's understanding of a divine natural order, his construction of a kind of (...) 'divine Englishness' and the way in which he relates this to particular English landscapes is explored. In particular, the paper investigates the natural, social and political power relationships which are embedded in Massingham's work, and suggests that his writing provides an interesting example of one way in which theological reasoning can reflect and reinforce concepts of a naturally ordered national identity. (shrink)