Abstract

Commentary on Kyle Johannsen, Wild Animal Ethics (Routledge, 2020). I want to unpack what we should understand by wild animal well-being, and how different interpretations of what matters about it shape the sorts of interventions we endorse. I will not offer a theory of wild animal well-being or even take a stance on the best approach to theories of well-being as they pertain to wild animals. My aim is to bring into view a concern that WAE has largely overlooked: agency and freedom. To Johannsen’s credit, the issue of liberties does feature in his Wild Animal Ethics (2020) (36–39, 41, 47). The interventions that he favors are those that, for a given amount of harm prevention, involve fewer liberty infringements. Liberties can act, to an extent, as constraints on permissible interventions. For all that, Johannsen’s primary focus remains welfare in a sense that does not appear to give much consideration to agency. Fortunately, his approach is open-ended enough to accommodate some of my concerns. My hope is that he sees them as possible ways of specifying the duties of beneficence, if not justice, that he rightly argues we have to wild animals.