Ownership, morality, and wildlife conservation

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary investigation of three morally contested dimensions of wildlife conservation: Who, if anyone, should own wildlife? What moral obligations, if any, do people have to conserve other species? What types of governance reform could help address contemporary conservation challenges? In Chapter 1 I describe the context for this dissertation. Wildlife conservation and governance must change to meet ecological challenges and social expectations, but the scope and direction of change required are contested. Much of the discourse on the future of wildlife conservation in the United States (U.S.) revolves around the concept of wildlife as a public trust. Nevertheless, disagreement over what it means for wildlife to be a public trust and competing interpretations of the concept’s implications can exacerbate rather than ameliorate conflict over the future of wildlife conservation. Chapters 2 and 3 offer practically orientated guidance to scholars and wildlife professionals interested in the potential of public trust thinking (PTT) to inspire socially and ecologically responsible wildlife governance reform. Chapter 2 outlines PTT’s foundation principles, and chapter 3 describes challenges and opportunities in applying PTT to wildlife governance in the U.S. Chapter 4 presents results of an empirical study of moral attitudes about wildlife ownership among people living in the U.S. Variation in moral attitudes can help explain why some wildlife conservation activities are more morally acceptable than others. Chapter 5 shows that ownership (defined as respect for possession) is a powerful but overlooked cooperative solution to resource conflict throughout the biological world. It consists of a literature review of ownership across disciplines and a new evolutionary game-theoretic model of how ownership arrangements can emerge and remain stable. Chapter 6 investigates whether the theory of evolution by natural selection can explain why conservation ethics (moral beliefs, intuitions, attitudes, and norms regarding other species) exist and why they vary. It consists of eco-evolutionary models of adaptive conservation behavior, and proposes that an evolutionary perspective might help resolve persistent moral debates over the value of other species. To better understand and address contemporary conservation challenges, we need to better understand morality. And to better understand morality, we need to incorporate evolution. Wildlife conservation approaches that go with the grain of evolved dispositions and harness our capacities for sustainable behavior are less likely to be morally contested, so are especially likely to succeed