Hi everyone,

I just have to give Josh some more credit for pursuing the
immunocontraception issue with such dogged persistence . . .  and with an
email to the list that is bound to offend just about everyone mentioned or
cited! !  <grin>

Let me offer an argument in response to Josh:  I don't think
immunocontraception is wrong, from either a humane/animal welfare
perspective or from an environmental perspective.  Let me immediately
qualify that by saying: immunocontraception is not wrong when it is used as
a semi-surgical management tool in specific contexts, that is to say, on
specifically targeted, local problem wildlife populations.   If, however,
it were proposed as a broad scale policy substitute for hunting or trapping
as a primary means of regulating wildlife populations, then I still think
immunocontraception would be a mistake.

First, within the humane perspective or framework: I don't think individual
animals care one way or another whether they are being subjected to
invasive birth control techniques.  Do animals have a fundamental right of
procreation?  No; or at least not yet, anyway. . . .  *Possibly* one could
argue, as I suggested in an earlier email, that the severe side effects on
the particular individuals selected for such treatment (e.g. male deer
treated with a Gonadotrophin-Releasing Hormone, or GnRH, vaccine) are so
dramatic that the treatment should be considered unethical for that reason.
(In my opinion, that argument gains more power from human aesthetic values
than from animal welfare concerns; but see my further comments about
aesthetics below.)

As far as the humane movement's perspective on the tradeoff between a pig's
life to make Porcine Zona Pellucida (PZP) vaccine and the desire for a
non-lethal way to control wildlife populations:  well, I think no one has
answered you yet, Josh, because this issue exposes a fundamental flaw in
the AR program.  Why?  because as you note, one has to make a choice
between a pig's life and a deer's life.  This is a problem.  And compounded
by the fact that such a choice is likely motivated *NOT* primarily by a
concern for animals lives per se, but rather is more *likely* motivated
from a misanthropic desire to prevent humans from enjoying an activity like
hunting . . .  well then, it all adds up to the seeming arbitrary valuation
of the deer's life at a higher level than that of an individual pig's life.
Which begins to smell an awful lot like rank speciesism, doesn't it?

The more difficult argument to make is to explain why immunocontraception
is not wrong from within an environmental perspective.  Josh argues *very*
persuasively that the collected luminaries of the environmental
pantheon--including Thoreau, Muir, etc.--would frown upon the domesticating
effects of "artificial" birth control.  For example, Josh wrote:

>Ray, kinda sorta, touched the issue.
>
>Ray on WI, "I'm not clear on what I think re wildlife and W.I." then
>launches into a discussion and support of feral cat and dog neutering. From
>this line of argument, Ray concludes "Imho.  W.I. may be a first step in
>some form of rectifying our own mistakes?" Ray ultimately comes to a
>position on WI by equating feral (non-native/uncontrolled/domesticated)
>animals with native wild animals. I think this is a fair representation of
>the common AR perspective on WI. An animal is an animal is an animal. Each
>is of equal worth and consideration. Amory would approve.
>
>However, almost every well-regarded environmental thinker would not.
>
>Thoreau valued wildness (not "wilderness" as a recent poster misquoted). The
>value of wild was greater than that of the domestic in his world. Leopold,
>father of the Land Ethic, would never consider domestic animals as
>equivalent to wild native animals. Neither would Olaus Murie, or Muir, or
>Abbey.
>
>By neutering a feral dog or cat, we are merely reaffirming what we already
>know, we are re-domesticated the domesticated. Shooting up wildlife with
>contraceptives is different, we are increasing the domesticity of the world
>and chipping away at the wild. The AR camp is indifferent and uncaring to
>this distinction.
>
>The environmental camp is defined by the distinction.
>
>An environmental sensitivity goes hand in hand with an ecological
>understanding, a love and appreciation of natural systems and of the wild.
>The use of WI specifically, and AR in general, is anathema to
>environmentalism.

While admirably concise and clearly written, this section of Josh's
argument gets us back to the familiar issue of the relation between natural
aesthetics and environmental ethics.  I tend to agree with those on this
list who say that wildlife immunocontraception is no different in principle
from hunting, in that it still represents an imposition of human culture
upon the natural environment, in the same way hunting does.   And the
animals themselves likely do not care whether that cultural imposition
takes the form of either "natural," "traditional" hunting or that of
"artificial," "modern" immunocontraception -- (leaving aside, for the
moment, those vexing questions of whether animals can be said to
self-consciously think about hunting or about their own deaths, and can
thus be said to have a "preference" for birth control instead of hunting).

*ALL* of the relevant value terms in Josh's argument are aesthetic terms,
implying an as yet unanalyzed framework of aesthetic (broadly understood)
valuation--love, appreciation, understanding; wild, wildness, domestic;
etc.  And unless Josh and/or the collected environmental sainthood he
appeals to can supplement his argument with some auxiliary normative or
ethical principles about why we *should* value and promote those human
aesthetic values, then his argument is only half stated.

Certainly nature (or Nature, with a capital "N") does not care one way or
another whether Thoreau's "wildness" truly exists in the actual state of
nature.  And Thoreau's primary concern was not actually with wild nature
itself, but with wildness exemplified as an aesthetic quality within human
experience.  Consider the fact that the semi-domesticated Walden Pond of
the 1840s, complete with the Fitchburg Railroad skirting its western shore,
provided much of the wildness that Thoreau needed for his artistic
inspiration, and that the land Thoreau squatted upon, namely Emerson's
eleven and a half acres, was in fact a fifteen year old clearcut forest,
consisting largely of a field of cutover hardwood stumps and some leftover
white pines--a "forest," by the way, that provided most if not all of the
"spiritual value" necessary to write the book, _Walden_.

.  .  .  hmmmm.  .  .  .  don't even get me started on Thoreau . . . .  :-)

Folks who remember the discussions on this list from not-too-long-ago will
know that I tend to favor aesthetic arguments in environmental ethics.   I
actually suspect that human/anthropocentric aesthetic values may be quite
possibly the *only* values to be "found" in nature, but that's another
story :-)

I think the argument you are trying to make, Josh, against wildlife
immunocontraception, is a good argument, but I think additionally you have
to account (more fully than you do) for the human aesthetic preference for
"wildness" as a primary object of moral concern, in order to eventually
trump the animal welfarist's concern for animals' (presumed) preferences
for "life" or for whatever.

Jim T.



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