David Takacs
Volume 76, Issue 5, 1459-1516
In the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere, people kill sentient creatures—by the millions every year—in the crusade to conserve biodiversity.
I explain how laws permit, and in some instances require, killing to save nonhuman species and to keep ecosystems functioning. In Australia, the nation with the worst record of mammalian extinctions, the government has tagged various invaders as “Key Threatening Processes.” In 2023, it laid out elaborate plans to rid the nation of as many feral cats as poison and hunters could kill. Similarly, “Predator Free New Zealand 2050” is the New Zealand government’s elaborate plan to trap and kill every stoat, weasel, fox, and rat that imperils the nation’s largely defenseless flightless bird species. The United States has no overarching plan to get rid of invasive animals that threaten endangered species, but nonetheless sanctions killing barred owls to save northern spotted owls, goats and sheep to save Hawaii’s Palila bird, and Burmese pythons to protect numerous Everglades species . . . the list goes on.
I explain how, where, and why these laws exist and function. In some nations, for some species and ecosystems, the moral calculus tilts towards killing for conservation. As in any conversation about biodiversity in the Anthropocene, the answers hinge on fundamental questions: What kind of planet do we want? Who do we want to share it with going forward? How much can we homogenize our surrounding ecosystems and still sustain human life? I advocate that in many cases, governments should continue to kill sentient, non-native creatures to save other creatures that are critical to maintaining the functioning ecosystems that sustain human lives.