Wild Souls: What We Owe Animals in a Changing World

by Emma Marris

From an acclaimed environmental writer, a groundbreaking and provocative new vision for our relationships with--and responsibilities toward--the planet's wild animals.

Protecting wild animals and preserving the environment are two ideals so seemingly compatible as to be almost inseparable. But in fact, between animal welfare and conservation science there exists a space of underexamined and unresolved tension: wildness itself. When is it right to capture or feed wild animals for the good of their species? How do we balance the rights of introduced species with those already established within an ecosystem? Can hunting be ecological? Are any animals truly wild on a planet that humans have so thoroughly changed? No clear guidelines yet exist to help us resolve such questions.

Transporting readers into the field with scientists tackling these profound challenges, Emma Marris tells the affecting and inspiring stories of animals around the globe--from Peruvian monkeys to Australian bilbies, rare Hawai'ian birds to majestic Oregon wolves. And she offers a companionable tour of the philosophical ideas that may steer our search for sustainability and justice in the non-human world. Revealing just how intertwined animal life and human life really are, Wild Souls will change the way we think about nature-and our place within it.

Winner of the 2022 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award * Winner of the 2022 Science in Society Journalism Award (Books) * Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Science, Philosophy, Animals, Environment, Biology

368 pages, Paperback

First published June 29, 2021

Reviews

[fleshy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I kind of want to burn down a zoo now. That is, of course, after freeing all the animals and relocating them to sanctuaries in appropriate areas.

To me this book is about the responsibility humans have to bear from both altering the world to suit our needs and being better positioned to interfere in the existence of other living things. To this end we are shown different situations nonhuman animals find themselves in, and the humans who care about them, or exploit them, or both.

I enjoyed the writing style and imagery, though this is a chiefly expository piece. I learned a lot about how divergent both conservationist theory and practice are. And how many animals die in order to protect animals of higher value to the conversationist.

I'm not sure what to think about all of it. I decided to become a stricter vegan halfway through the book, then a breatharian, then I realized nothing I can do individually will reduce the number of farm animals on the planet, but I still don't want to be party to the removal of their autonomy.

Just...spay and neuter your pets, and make sure your ship doesn't have any rodent stowaways.

[L.G. Cullens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat interesting reading to me, but being the book is more of developing philosophical ruminations relative to the human/nature dichotomy, I found the "intellectualizing" a bit wordy and sterile.

At length, there are good points made, and I did like the author's inclusion of some indigenous perspectives in the ruminations.

It does have the potential to leave one with a much broader understanding of a Margaret J. Wheatley quote: "Probably the most visible example of unintended consequences, is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place."

That, taken together with considering new genetic techniques begs an Albert Einstein quote: “Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”

Amidst all the author's ponderings my thoughts are that the heart of Nature is change, striving through evolution towards some productive balance of biodiversity in an ever changing environment. All creatures alter their habitat, and those that have the greatest impact imperil not only untold others but themselves.

[Shirleynature]

This engaging read will be especially helpful to readers who haven't yet reckoned with human impacts to our natural world; nonfiction narrative infused with experiential memoir and anecdotal storytelling.
I look forward to recommending this book and perhaps also a bookclub read! Thanks to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for access to review in advance, published June 29. 2021.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seemed like a collection of essays and articles the author wrote for various magazines strung into a book. While there was an overriding theme - the philosophy of wildlife conservation and more broadly how we relate to animals and the compromises we have to make in tackling practical conservation issues such as island extinctions, the individual chapters were largely standalone pieces. In a way this builds on her first book on how change in nature should be the only constant and we should let species adapt and change to the world we are changing so rapidly without judgment or undue interference.

The low rating is due to my low level of interest in philosophizing about animal well-being, and the jumbled organization of the book, not a critique of the author's writing skill or style, which was quite engaging mostly.

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you imagine merging a David Attenborough nature documentary with The Good Place tv show (i.e., approachable, heartfelt, episodic moral philosophizing), plus a dash of Tiger King and Bear Grylls, all distilled into book form... You might have a pretty good conception of the experience of reading Wild Souls. It framed really difficult ethical questions with fascinating science, loads of facts and figures, and a series of personal vignettes and interesting characters. I read this book over two days straight, and it held my attention the entire time. (I actually listened to the audiobook version while driving and doing house projects, and it very much held my attention despite the multitasking.)

Especially considering how dense, dry, and depressing the material could be (moral philosophy, climate change, species extinction, etc), it's delightful and thought-provoking. Highly recommended!

[Corey Schuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

'De onderlinge verwevenheid van levens waar de milieuactivist in mij zo van houdt, is onopzettelijk ontstaan door evolutie, in een volstrekt amoreel proces dat toevallig een wereld heeft voortgebracht die zo mooi is dat je hart een sprongetje van vreugde maakt. Deze wereld is gebouwd en gevoed doordat materie en energie uit de atmosfeer en uit het zonlicht van het ene organisme naar het andere stromen, in een kringloop van dood en eten en sterven en rotten. Die stroom zelf is al iets waardevols.

De dood zorgt ervoor dat energie doorstroomt en is dus noodzakelijk en waardevol voor de kerntaak van de natuurbescherming: laat de stroom vloeien, houdt de relaties levend, houdt de evolutie gaande.

Voor individuen zorgen is het tegenovergestelde. De essentie van zorg is het sturen van energie en materie naar één lichaam, om het levend te houden. Als ik voor mijn kinderen zorg, voed ik ze met de energie van andere lichamen, van andere levens. Zorg gaat over het samenbundelen van energie en stoffen in geliefde individuen, niet over het in stand houden van de stroom.

Op een fundamenteel lichamelijk niveau is het onmogelijk om voorrang te geven aan de stroom én voorrang te geven aan het individu. Je kunt niet voor alle individuen op aarde tegelijk zorgen, omdat het voeden en in leven houden van de één betekent dat je die weghoudt uit de maag van de ander, die daardoor verhongert. Als wij onszelf benoemen tot de verdelers van alle materie en energie op aarde, nemen wij een last op ons die te kolossaal is om te kunnen begrijpen, laat staan om hem te dragen. We zijn niet waardig en ook niet capabel genoeg om beheerder te zijn van alles op aarde.

Daarin zit de spanning die ik voortdurend probeer op te lossen: tussen mijn respect voor de waarde van het individu en mijn meer mystieke ontzag voor wat ons als dieren verbindt met alle andere levensvormen, een ontzag dat centraal staat in mijn liefde voor de niet-menselijke wereld.

"Elke samenleving die individuele levensvormen hoog in het vaandel heeft staan, zal moeite hebben met de pijnlijke aspecten in het verhaal van de voedselketen." De enige manier om deze twee uitersten op te lossen, is om "de wereld en onszelf tegelijkertijd van twee kanten te bekijken'".'

[Ben Goldfarb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was honored to be a blurber for this book. Here's what I wrote: "In this relentless masterpiece of environmental philosophy, Emma Marris interrogates every truism, cross-examines every claim, and subverts every shibboleth of modern conservation. Wild Souls brings razor-sharp reasoning and unflinching moral clarity to a field that occasionally suffers from fuzzy logic. This is a book meant to be argued with, in the best possible sense."

[Laurence Faveere · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enkele boeiende (hoofd)stukken met veel stof tot nadenken 💭 Soms wel heeeel veel namen van wetenschappers die wat onnodig worden vermeld 🙃

“Alleen al het feit dat het leven uit lijden bestaat, schept de noodzaak voor empathie”

Laatste hoofdstuk als een mooi einde 👏🏻
“We komen voort uit het leven en wij zijn het doorvoerkanaal naar ander leven”

[Cassie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wild Souls is a deep dive into the ethics of human-wildlife interrelationships. Much of this is familiar ground for me, covered in less detail (but more humor) in Noah’s Choice, by Charles Mann and my late husband, Mark Plummer. Marris speaks to the next generation, covering the scientific complexities and moral dilemmas presented by a booming human population dominating a finite planet.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting read, especially for a wild animal lover. The book was a bit more philosophical than I was expecting, which normally wouldn't be my thing, but even I enjoyed the discussions on wildness concerning condors and wolves. I will say it had me thinking about "wildness" and conservation in a different way, even if it didn't point toward straight forward answers.

[Anneloes V · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most definitely my favorite read of 2022

[Roshini · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, thought-provoking book. This is the first time I’m reading a book that talks about the philosophy and ethics of conservation and ecology. It brought up some fascinating questions, and the case studies really got me to step away from my own understanding of many of the issues surrounding conservation. What counts as “the wild” in a world that is so impacted by the actions of human beings? We are Nature, so how can we separate ourselves from Her? Some of the best books are those that make you uncomfortable, and this definitely raised questions that caused discomfort. Would definitely recommend.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conservation is complicated and this quote will stay with me "Our wilderness are just places where colonialism left the trees standing." Also I really want to visit the South Pacific.

[Estevon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Go read Braiding Sweetgrass!

TLDR: Author struggles for the first time with the role of humans in nature. Succeeds only in taking a crap on conservationists unfortunate enough to be in their way.

I struggled for a while with whether I should give Wild Souls a one star or two. I usually give poor books a three star review and chock up most of my dissatisfaction to something I was missing or a mood that I just could not get behind. But, I was surprised by how many times I would find myself shouting out loud in exasperation while listening to this book. What's more, I actually agree with MANY of the points addressed, such as the defrauded lives of zoo animals, and the penchant of people to treat pets as commodities rather than thinking/feeling beings. But the book read like the author was actively working through the problems for themselves and the conclusion was a giant chapter-long shrug. They tried to frame many of the points as if through the lens of western philosophy (maybe to get some sort of cache with the reader?), but really only succeeds in slapping down some lame quotes from widely recognized people (eg Aristotle, Kant, Wittgenstein) with the fervor of a college Sophomore. To maintain the high-brow approach many points are taken in a strained, neutral tone that leaves loopholes big enough to sail an oil tanker through. The phrase that kept coming to mind was "Ecological Nihilism." The hill they kept coming back to die on was whether we had the right to kill rats that were introduced to islands. The apparent reasoning being Humans = Nature, therefore everything we do is "Natural." "Don't worry, the island ecosystem will sort itself out in a few millennia!" (WTF?! Where was the editor?) And rats are beings just as worthy of living as we are, so we have no right to kill them... Except you're dooming entire ecosystems to extinction and the future generations of the rats to starvation due to your unwillingness to cope with the past mistakes of humans?
The number of times where topics such as "cornerstone species" should have been addressed and wasn't was enraging. Clearly, the author wasn't listening to the conservationists interviewed about rat control or simply chose to ignore them "for the purity of philosophy!" Simply, some species provide something of value to MANY others in an ecosystem and losing that ONE species would mean destabilizing the entire ecosystem.
Extinction was, thankfully, mentioned but was often just sidelined as something unfortunate that happens. Sure, more species have gone extinct than have existed in the time of humans, but maybe they should have taken a beat to sort out that galaxy-brain thought before using it to counter the need to stop extinctions now. I'm sure many readers will put more emphasis on the parts mourning the loss than those countering but not everyone will. (This is another part where an editor would have been nice.) Many readers will see that and go, "ok so this is normal and environmentalists are just being overly sensitive sissies."
I only read this book because a copy became available on Libby before the book I really meant to read: Braiding Sweetgrass. I ended up reading that book in it's entirety after Wild Souls as a cleansing chaser to the mess that was this book. That book is everything that Wild Souls isn't (ironically, it quoted Braiding Sweetgrass). Braiding Sweetgrass is not afraid to lay out its opinion. Braiding sweetgrass is written by a scientist. Braiding Sweetgrass understands that death is a part of life. Braiding Sweetgrass is willing to address the past misdeeds of humans.

If you're in the mood for nature content, go read Braiding Sweetgrass

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another thought provoking read that really opens the debate on the sentience of non human animals in a non judgmental way from a biological and philosophical viewpoint. Some of the ideas I have read before, but the compilation was most compelling. I think I knew that wolves and domestic dogs can breed and produce fertile offspring, but what do we do with the offspring that are hybrid? The author tells a story of a Washington state pet who decided to be a wolf for a month or so and mated with a wild wolf, and authorities ended up aborting/sterilizing the pregnant dog so they didn’t have to decide. But it shows the dilemma.

When you hear that rats have a joyful chirp/laugh, how do you feel? How do you feel when you learn it is too high for humans to hear? These thought experiments include the plight of polar bears, who are starving due to global warming but who are not in immediate danger of extinction, but a reduction in numbers is hiding the “starving bears, dying cubs, and sadness and pain for thousands of bears.” Do you think of nature taking it course as the right way (laissez-faire intuition) and we harm wild animals every day by building a new housing development, for example; or do you think we have some responsibility to try to alleviate the pain and suffering we have caused, called collective responsibility?

Looking at an activist in the Galapagos trying to rid it of introduced pests, the author talks about domestic cats killing 4 billion birds and 22.3 billion mammals every year in the US, but has not caused extinctions; on islands, cats have been a factor in 63 extinctions in Australia or islands. The activist has had tremendous success at dire costs in ridding islands from the PNW to Polynesia, but the collateral damage is acceptable depending on who you ask. If asked, what do you say? Domestic animals, cattle, pets, birds, etc. can be caught by the same poison.

Aldo Leopold founded the field of environmental ethics posthumously, the idea that species- and the ecosystems they live in- are valuable in and of themselves. Leopold sent much of his career managing wildlife, and in his essay, Thinking Like a Mountain, he explained the role of wolves in keeping the populations of deer down so they don’t overgraze; his experience of killing wolves to save deer, to create a hunter’s paradise, resulted in wolf-less landscapes grazed so heavily, all the food gone, the numerous deer would run out of food…Biological evolution has endowed us with a basic tendency to cooperate with one another. A completely selfish “war of every man against every man”- the state of nature described by Thomas Hobbes as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”- never existed. As cultural evolution has built on what biology provided us with , the circle of moral consideration has expanded to cover larger and larger groups of pole. Today-in theory, anyway- pretty much everyone agrees that all human lives are valuable. Leopold called for us to enlarge our sense of who or what is part of our “community” and therefore morally valuable even further, to include animals, plants, and the land…that they have “a right to continued existence and in their natural state.”

Animals definitely feel emotions…as “evolutionary skills” that help a wide range of species navigate the complex problems in everyday life. The brain areas associated with emotions are evolutionary ancient and present in nearly all mammals. The idea of emotions as “skills” was somewhat revelatory to me as emotions are so common in animals that they are almost certainly adaptive.
Joy is old. Our close kin, the apes, laugh when they are tickled and at play. Wolves play and frolic when young, though they become more serious as adults. Dogs are peter pan canines, never growing up, playing for their whole lives. Baby rats play and laugh and like to be tickled. Rat laughter is a chirp so high-pitched that humans can’t hear it. Fear and sadness are widespread as well, alas, nestled into the brain right next to the systems for physical pain. Bird and mammal babies commonly make little distress calls if left alone too long. There’s no reason to believe that they do not feel psychological pain when they make distress calls, just as we do when we are lonely and scared…

Animals also arguably make art. The male bowerbirds of New Guinea and Australia dedicate huge fractions of their time and energy to creating elaborate structures from twigs, flowers, berries, beetle wings and even colorful trash. They are the backdrops to their complex mating dances…they aren’t stereotyped like a beehive or hummingbird nest. Each one is different. Many researchers think these displays are used by the females to gauge the cognitive abilities of her potential mates, but Darwin thought she was actually attracted to their beauty.

Moral particularism is a school of thought that holds that most moral people aren’t “principled.” Rather than living by maxims or rules or commandments, the most moral way to act is to pay careful attention to all the features of a particular case, develop defensible reasons for acting in a certain way, and then act. Your reasons do not have to be applied consistently from case to case, nor do you have to involve appeals to overarching moral principles. This approach leaves lots of room for context, relationships, and feelings to matter. Gruen suggests that our moral decision making should emerge from our “entangled empathy” with animals. She defines it as a “type of caring perception focused on attending to another’s experience of well being, involving an experiential blend of emotion and cognition.” The idea that this approach is “feminine” as opposed to more accepted “masculine” principle-based views of the past is unfortunate since it “further entrenches stereotypical gender roles and seems to preclude the idea that men are caring.”

It is almost as if each species has a set value, which is divided among all the individuals. Say there are 4 billion black rats on Earth. Let’s set the arbitrary value at each species at 100,000 value points. Under this math each rat would be 0.000025 apiece and each condor would be worth 200. And this valuation matches how we treat them. The rat is despised, shunned, killed without a thought; the condor is cherished, lavished with care and money. Animal rights thinker Tom Regan: “The inherent value and rights of individuals do not wax or wane depending how plentiful or how rare are the species to which they belong. Beaver are not less valuable because they are more plentiful than bison.”

I think both allowing hybridization with grizzly bears to sustain them and feeding polar bears could be ethically acceptable, if done right. A key criterion would be approval and participation of indigenous groups...and it be temporary, although it could be as long as 1,000 years. I kept imagining a day, in some future era, long after we are dad, in which climate change has not just been halted, but has been successfully reversed. The sea ice is back, and the seal hunting is good. After generations of complete dependence of the feeding stations, scientist have helped the polar bears in certain populations relearn hunting skills, they are relying less and less on the supplemental food, and the decision is made to shut the program down at long last. The humans feel good they got these bears thought the hot bottleneck period… A goodbye ceremony is performed. Local people come out with their kids; there’s cake and punch. They open the gates and gently shoo the bears away.

[Roxanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good book about protecting wild animals and preserving their environment. It explores a animals wildness but also when is right to capture them to help their species survive. At the zoo near me a miracle baby rhino was born but the father rhino had died. This is a tricky subject because so many animals are poached or hunted until extinction so to me saving them is important.

[Yanick Punter · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was good. I agree with Emma that we should abandon some values. These are naturalness, wilderness, ecological and genetic integrity, and purity in general.

I have other values in mind, which includes: speciation, well-being, spontanity (uncertainty), autonomy (no control or completion), antifragility, resilience or robustness,  biodiversity, biomass (densities) the flourishing of evolutionary distinct species, ecological creativity, spatial diversity (disorder) and the filling and creation of niches.

[Dayton Martindale · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read in years--even where I disagree with conclusions, her process for sorting through morally complex issues regarding animals, species, and ecosystems feels spot on. Feels like a necessary push to rethink how the conservation world approaches its work.

Listen to my interview with Emma Marris here:
https://shows.acast.com/storytelling-...
or:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/35AQ...

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finding the best philosophical stance toward animals is complicated because almost every choice is filled with contradictions. It's not enough to be an animal lover if that means that you want to smother animals with love and impose a human idea of a good life on them. And what about the conservationists who participate in campaigns to kill large numbers of animals because they are deemed to be invasive? Is it right to sacrifice a thousand lives of a common species to save one life from an endangered one? How can we have protection of the environment as a value when every environment constantly evolves so trying to turn back the clock may not only be impossible but may actually do more harm than good? And how can we favor an idea of wilderness when every square inch of the planet already bears the imprint of humanity in some way? The best answer in this book seems to be to approach animals with an attitude of respect learned from North American indigeous people. We should see humans as part of a bigger web of nature, even when they are living in steel and concrete cities. Don't expect wild animals to be kind or fair. Allow hunting but limit it and practice it in a way that respects the lives that are taken. Even this perspective leads to some contradictions, so there doesn't seem to be any perfect answer, but Ms. Marris is asking the right questions, and even if she hasn't discovered any final right answers, she at least points in some directions that feel more moral and better for everyone in the long run than some others that may have been well-intended but that have consequences that can be clearly seen as being too negative when carefully considered.

[Daniel Hageman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the first 'mainstream' book I've come across that takes seriously the genuine interests of wild animals, from an individual animal POV rather than that of a species. I think that Marris could have taken a stronger stance based on where many of her arguments were leading her, and for the life of me I couldn't believe that she was continually referring to Peter Singer as a preference utilitarian (I don't think she mentions hedonism by name, ever, which Singer has subscribed to for at least 10-20 years if I'm not mistaken). Nonetheless, it's great to hear her think aloud regarding such a serious cause area, and I loved that she mentions effective altruism, albeit with some oversimplified interpretations of said general community.

[Elizabeth Fiala · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about the ethical considerations surrounding conservation and animal welfare, so needless to say it's not always an easy read. It provides multiple perspectives and different ethical stances, but ultimately ends without one clear answer--which was fine with me, as no one solution or ideology is going to solve all the world's ills. There's a lot to chew on here that had my brain buzzing, but I was left feeling that, above all, the author's parting thought--that we should be humble and share our space with non-humans--is a good philosophy to walk away with.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Expanding the author's prior investigation into "wild" (airquoted throughout) space and rejecting the line between human and nature, she philosophically and environmentally unpacks what obligations we have to animals and species - in her view, mistaken valuing of "naturalness" and "species genetic purity" (reflecting colonial inflected categorization) rather than autonomy and ecosystem diversity - through location reporting on zoos and conservation projects, eradication campaigns and captive breeding. Well summed up in the suggestion that rather than de-extincting woolly mammoths, we coexist with nature in new ways such that we can imagine elephants able to migrate over the next ten thousand years to occupy places where they would adapt with hairy coats.

[Nicolas B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably everyone would agree that animals are sentient beings and that we, humans, have an impact on their living and suffering. “Wild Souls” is not about our everyday companions, such as cats and dogs, living with us in our comfy houses. It’s about wild animals, or at least what we think are wild animals. Because hardly is there any place on earth untouched directly or indirectly by us in the modern world. It can be easy to make us aware about our impact on wild animals and we can feel an urgent need for action – the polar and panda bear are probably the most iconic examples in case. Our wish to help these animals is often noble and selfish at the same time. We are not devoting the same resources to all endangered animals. We are extremely subjective about which animals we deem special enough to do almost whatever it takes to preserve them, even if it means killing other sentient animals along the way. “Wild Souls” is not dropping the moral hammer on us for our hypocrisy. It rather asks us to reflect our past decisions and show humility with our future ones. We should be aware of our subjectivity, limited resources, and potential adverse effects of saving one animal over another. We should consider that environments are naturally unstable and entire species can vanish without our contribution. We should ponder if it is really a noble effort to preserve animals just for their rarity or genetic purity. But for all our efforts to rectify our influence on wild animals in the modern world, we should not loose sight of our primary goal to let wild animals be free and flourish. Here, “Wild Souls” took a long but lively detour before arriving back at its title: freedom and flourish means that we should create an environment where wild animals can make their own decisions and live their lives as undisturbed as possible. To make this happen may sometimes require human intervention, e.g. to help animals adapt to a new environment following the human-caused introduction of new species or human-made climate change. However, we should show humility in our decisions to intervene because their impact may be unpredictable or unworthy.

[kulisap · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is one of the most thought-provoking and perceptive books i have ever read. what a privilege to have been able to read this. i can feel this will stay with me for a long time and guide me in how i approach conservation and nature in the future.

rtc

[Kent Pierce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I have read all year. If you plan on getting into the fields of conservation, land management, ecology, biology, or any other environmental field this is a must read book. Life is death is life.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am so thankful that i found this book and decided to read it ❤️ what a beautiful journey

[Steve Sargent · Rating 5 out of 5]

More philosophical than I understood going into the book, but nevertheless, an important and beautiful read, expanding understandings of wilderness and creature-ness.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an engaging book written by a thoughtful and intelligent person who clearly passionately cares about the non-human world, but which ultimately fails to come to any kind of coherent conclusions about its premise (what moral responsibilities humans owe the non-domesticated, non-human world). Her ultimate point is that things are complicated and no single answer is ever going to be sufficient/apply in all cases, and that we should proceed with humility and care. And while I can agree with this sentiment, I think that there's so much more to be said and I disagreed with many of the few soft conclusions Marris does come to.

The book starts from the premise that, via a myriad of far spreading human effects from pollution to climate change to poaching, virtually no species can be considered "wild" (the first of several false dichotomies, that wildness can't be a gradient but can only be pure wild or not). From here Marris poses the very interesting question, if these animals aren't wild anymore, do we have moral obligations to them similar to the ones we owe domestic animals? That's a pretty solid and provocative central premise for a book that had me immediately hooked. I think that Marris does an excellent job tackling what are generally more clear cut cases: zoos and other forms of wild animals being held in captivity, animals nearly extinct in the wild being taken into captivity for captive reintroduction programs. She gives an impressively concise shotgun chapter covering non-human sentience and the case for their moral recognition, as well as a brief but I'd say inadequate survey of philosophical approaches to humanity's relationship with the non-human world (kudos for centering indigenous philosophies in here though). But once she ventures into more complex conservation issues, Marris seems less willing to come to any firm conclusions. She also fails to engage sufficiently with either the philosophical or ecological complexities of the topics. For example, she repeatedly denies the moral relevance of ecosystems or species, but never engages with the wealth of philosophical argumentation for objective value in both of these. I'll admit I don't find many of these convincing myself, but I think they still merit explanation/engagement. Likewise she scoffs at terms like ecological integrity and stability, associating them purely with the eugenics tainted theories of Clements and ignoring their importance to ecological theory, conservation practice, and animal flourishing today. This links back to the deeply reductionist conclusion that, b/c the long-standing nature/human is a false dichotomy, everything human must be natural and all Western ecological science that emphasizes ecological stability is a form of colonialism. A basic example that should have been examined is the removal of keystone species leading to destabilization of ecological communities and turning ecosystems into barren wastelands with drastically lower diversity and net numbers of individuals.

Marris is clearly a talented and thoughtful writer. This book echos many challenging questions to conservation raised in the debates around Compassionate Conservation and Rewilding. Hopefully it gets a popular audience to think critically about our relationship with non-human nature and what that phrase even means. I disagree with many of the conclusions Marris arrives at but think it's important that we continue to evolve our cultural and moral ideas around this topic.


Some notes

Ch 15
The final chapter covers what Marris considers we ought to do to be, as she puts it, good humans to the non-human world. There’s a lot of beautiful writing in this last chapter, but ultimately it fails for me to tie together all of the very many strings of the book into a coherent perspective answering the book’s initial question. It’s such an incredibly broad topic, and Marris did a commendable job touching on just about every major conservation issue, though rarely with what I would consider sufficient depth. But in the end she is knitting climate change, human overpopulation, and habitat destruction together as major drivers of animal suffering and displacement despite not really having gone into depth on any of them.
Crucially, at the very end she covers something that’s been missing from the entire book thus far, Chelsea Batavia’s paper in Conservation Biology, which argues that we are sometimes (often?) faced with moral dilemmas in conservation for which there is no single correct choice. (This is one of the best papers to come out of the Compassionate Conservation debate, so it’s a shame that Marris attributes its conclusions to ‘Wallach and her co-authors’, thereby minimizing the contribution of Batavia who is the first author of the paper! [A seemingly minor thing to gripe about in Marris’ writing, but fairly attributing authorship/work is important stuff in scientific circles]). We may only have a list of options that will cause harm to some individuals and some species, and we must choose the least harmful option.
The last chapter ties back to an idea that is sprinkled throughout the book, first treated in detail in the hunting chapter, and gradually revisited/expanded for the remainder of the book: that death is an inevitable part of life and the continuation of living systems. This is a truth that causes some cognitive tension to people who want to minimize animal and human suffering – at a foundational level, death is a necessary part of life. Marris articulates this point rather vaguely via spiritual/cultural analogy. But there’s a very real biological/evolutionary/ecological basis for this. Evolution requires selection, selection requires differentiated survival. Without death, no complex life would ever have evolved. All of the world’s biomass would be locked up in single cellular forms. As Marris notes, it is a network through which life / energy has to flow from person to person. We all eat other forms of life, we give that energy up when we die, transferring energy back and forth across the network in a beautifully complex web of trillions of connections and interpersonal interactions and biogeochemical processes that makes up Earth’s ecosphere. Wanting to hold things in stasis is a form of fearing death, fearing growing old, fearing losing loved ones. Certainly in American culture, we have a deep seated fear of death and need to mature existentially and emotionally past this, and we can draw from the wisdom of other cultures that are more understanding and embracing of death’s important role. And making this cultural step would certainly do wonders for our impact on the planet – if we weren’t so afraid of dying, maybe we’d be less likely to go on shopping sprees or consume endless social media/streaming as ways to stave off existential despair. As someone who doesn’t believe in an afterlife, this is something I’ve certainly struggled with (the fear, not the shopping). So Marris has a fundamentally important and profound point here. We need to resolve this tension in conservation over how we treat animals, and to what extent we’re willing to tolerate death, of species and individuals, and what we’re willing to kill for. And I agree with the formulation that she comes to at the end:
A thing is right when it promotes the flourishing and autonomy of living things, their diversity, and the complexity of their interactions – but where we cannot promote all these things at the same time, we must make our choices with care and humility.
But this isn’t enough either. The importance of death doesn’t obviate a moral obligation to reduce unnecessary suffering. Marris is never willing to come out and say that we have such an obligation, only obliquely hints at its possibility. It’s perhaps an accomplishment of craft to be able to lay out a series of case studies and sign posts pointing in the direction you’re thinking, without ever directly articulating some of your underlying values. And maybe that’s what’s necessary for popular writing; I don’t know – I’m not a popular writer. But there’s still some conflict and tension in Marris’ own writing. She not so subtly sidesteps the issue of the ethics of farming livestock for human consumption. She endorses hunting (and not too subtly connects vegans criticizing hunting as being out of touch w/ reality and attempting to foist their cultural values onto indigenous peoples. This latter may be true, in the same way that we foisted values of human equality on racist slaveholders after the US Civil War [i.e. the slaveholders’ rebellion]. If, as Marris herself asserts, animals have intrinsic value, there is at least a good faith argument to be had that hunting animals is objectively wrong, in the same way that it’s not acceptable to murder humans regardless of your cultural beliefs [unless you’re a cultural relativist, in which case you also need to defend Nazism]. As such, it’s pretty disingenuous to dismiss it so, more so by not making the argument yourself but by quoting an indigenous writer to make it for you. Though I do recognize that once you dive into that topic, it’s volumes on its own). But she also acknowledges that there are good arguments that even painlessly killing animals is to rob them of the enjoyment of the lives they are entitled to. It may be that for much of human history, we imposed necessary suffering on other species for our own preservation, as non-human predators do today. But we have long since passed the necessity of this suffering for most humans on the planet. This is something that Marris completely elides, as she fails to engage with most any viewpoints (philosophical, ecological, or cultural) that don’t mesh with the narrative she is spinning. Again, not engaging with opposing viewpoints/evidence may make for a better popular book. But it doesn’t make for a compelling argument. Marris is clearly an intelligent and thoughtful writer who cares passionately about non-human nature, but to my reading, she is still unable to articulate coherent values and tie them to meaningful conservation strategies. This is, of course, her ultimate point: that these are scientifically and ethically fraught situations where no prescripted strategies will hold up under the rapidly shifting contexts we find ourselves in, that we need to value humility first. But I disagree in a pretty crucial way. I think humility needs to be co-equal with compassion. Marris presents several false dichotomies throughout the book. In the last chapter, in addressing the essentialness of death, she points out that there’s no way to care for (which she literally defines as keeping individuals alive) all individuals, since some must die for others to live. This sets up a false dichotomy between caring (which I and I think most people would use as a synonym for having compassion) and allowing the ecosphere to function. But this is a false dilemma predicated on an unnecessarily restrictive definition of caring. We do not care less about our aged relatives when we allow them to slip into death painlessly when their time comes, rather than trying to extend their lifespans as long as possible. We can be compassionate in killing rats that would otherwise drive albatrosses to extinction. And that process of compassion entails killing as a last resort, with regret and acknowledgement of the wrong done to those feeling animals. This is a point that Marris never brings herself to articulate, though I suspect she feels it in some fashion. And this is the same error in judgement that I think underlies the problems with Wallach’s conception of compassionate conservation – an overly restrictive (and I would argue wrong) definition of the word compassion, such that it only covers our behavior towards animals that we directly affect in the present.

[Tucker Andrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good! Definitely changed the way I think about the environment and conservation, extremely well-written, and ultimately hopeful despite it all. Strongly recommend 😁

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting read, and definitely challenged the way I think about our relationships with the animal world. Particularly the idea of "wildness" and "wilderness" being separate from us, and not something we are a part of.

I appreciated the philosophical approach, but it wasn't entirely for me, so I found some sections of philosophy theory a bit dense and got on far better with the case studies, travel experiences and the author's own anecdotes.

I valued that she respectfully included land acknowledgements and actually interviewed and shared the perspectives of Indigenous people in the places she travelled to. This is a low bar to clear but lord knows most authors in this sphere don't manage it.