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262 R White The debates over the ways in which ‘feral’ and ‘invasive’ animals are approached provide a useful summary of conflicting views pertaining to human intervention Invasive species are seen as a threat to local species in the same way that ill animals are seen as a threat to local animal populations More generally, from the perspective of humans, certain creatures are by their very nature hostile to human interests As such, they demand action to eradicate or control them in order to protect humans from harm This applies to ‘vermin, pests and parasites’ that cannot adjust their behaviour and with which there is no possibility of communication or compromise If left unchecked, they would create ecological havoc and harm to humans—and to other species (Anderson 2004) Animals have rights, but which and how these are enforced are variable depending upon natural and social contexts (Anderson 2004; White 2013) As has been observed by some writers (Cazaux 1999), consideration of human practices that are detrimental to the well-being of animals, such as loss and fragmentation of habitat, tend to focus on the effects regarding animal populations of a certain species (matters pertaining to the threat of extinction) Less attention is paid to the consequences of broad trends to the well-being of animals as individual subjects (see Sollund 2012) Ethical and moral dilemmas involving animals—in life and death situations—also extend to instances where individual animals of one species are sacrificed for the sake of the preservation of an entire other species, which can be either plant or animal In a 1996 case, the US Fish and Wildlife Service moved to poison 6,000 gulls at Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge off Cape Cod, in order to save 35 piping plovers, an endangered species … San Clemente Island, off the coast of California, has both endemic plant species and a population of feral goats, introduced by Spanish sailors two centuries ago To protect plants numbering in the few hundreds, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the US Navy have shot tens of thousands of feral goats (Rolston 2010, pp 605–606) This represents cases where the so-called ethic of species has triumphed The death of individual creatures has been weighed up against the potential demise of whole species While objectionable from the point of view of killing animals, unless suitable alternatives for relocation are possible or available, there is a moral justification for such acts insofar as they allow future and more diverse life to flourish Likewise, threats to those habitats that service a wide variety of species may mean human intervention to ‘cull’ the ‘offending’ creatures—as in the case of expanding populations of kangaroo in Canberra that promised to completely denude the landscape and thereby ruin the survival chances of all species in the same vicinity
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