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40 The Wildlife Professional, July/August 2017 © The Wildlife Society
Credit: Bradly J. Boner, Jackson Hole Daily
In October 2013, a man taking part in a guided elk
hunt in Wyoming spotted a group of gray wolves
in the distance. They were within the state’s
predator management zone, where wolves may be
killed without a license, so after crawling to ap-
proach them, the hunter took aim and red. The shot
killed one of the wolves, and the hunter strapped the
carcass to the top of his SUV, drove to Jackson Hole’s
town square and parked downtown across from the
famed Cowboy Bar, according to a report in the local
newspaper, the Jackson Hole News and Guide.
The take was lawful, but the incident unleashed a re-
storm of angry responses on the newspaper’s opinion
page. Residents questioned not only the motivations
and morality of the hunter; they called into question
the legitimacy of the act as a form of hunting.
“This is what revenge looks like,” wrote wildlife
photographer Thomas Mangelsen in an opinion
column in the newspaper. “When people raise their
guns as an emotional expression of hatred toward a
species, it is not hunting,” he wrote.
Manglesen and the outraged residents of Wyoming
aren’t alone. Mounting evidence indicates that
societal views concerning our relationship with wild
— and domestic — animals have been changing.
They are moving away from a focus on using animals
solely as a means to promote human well-being to a
growing interest in the well-being of animals (Man-
fredo et al. 2003, Manfredo et al. 2009).
The rst inkling of this shift was noted more than
30 years ago in an analysis of news articles span-
ning seven decades. That analysis found evidence
of a long-term shift, which began following World
War I, away from concerns for the “practical and
material value of animals” (Kellert 1985). More
recent research suggests that societal views about
wildlife are turning toward an emphasis on greater
care and compassion for wild animals (Manfredo
et al. 2009).
This shift is reected in attitudes about the treat-
ment of so-called “nuisance” wildlife that damage
property or cause other economic harms. A recent
study indicates that while most Americans support
a landowner’s right to control nuisance wildlife,
they are increasingly skeptical about the means of
control (Slagle et al. 2017). The shift is also reected
in Gallup polling, which indicates the percentage
of Americans who believe animals have the “same
rights as people” increased from 25 to 32 percent
between 2008 and 2015.
Concerns of this nature are not limited to the United
States. In the early 1990s, the European Union
implemented a ban on leghold traps and other meth-
ods that do not meet agreed-upon humane trapping
standards (Council Regulation (EEC) No. 3254/91).
These examples, as well as others, suggest that the
values, beliefs and attitudes guiding societies’ rela-
tionships with the planet’s wildlife are in the midst
of profound change. We are expanding our moral
community to include animals, and we are increas-
ingly concerned for their welfare.
By Jeremy T. Bruskotter, John A. Vucetich and Michael Paul Nelson
CONFLICTING OR COMPATIBLE?
Animal Rights and Wildlife Conservation
HUMAN-WILDLIFE CONNECTION
A passerby stops to
photograph a wolf carcass
strapped to the roof of
an SUV in Jackson Hole,
Wyoming.
41www.wildlife.org
© The Wildlife Society
Wildlife conservation’s
philosophical roots
These changes are likely to challenge wildlife
conservation methods in North America, which
are strongly rooted in the traditions of hunting and
trapping. Nineteenth-century overexploitation,
including market hunting, led to severe declines of
numerous North American wildlife species (Dunlap
1991). Those declines helped catalyze a movement
during the early 20th century that emphasized
sustainable harvest of wildlife (Leopold 1933) —
exploiting a few species as much as society wanted
without infringing on future interests to do so
(Vucetich and Nelson 2010). This “hunter-centric”
model of wildlife conservation sought to produce
game animals to harvest (Geist et al. 2001). As Aldo
Leopold wrote early in his career, game manage-
ment was “the art of making land produce sustained
annual crops of wild game for recreational use
(Leopold 1933).”
This philosophy still guides wildlife management
today. Fundamentally anthropocentric and utilitar-
ian, it is rooted in the ideas that only humans possess
intrinsic value and that wildlife is a resource that
should be used to benet humans. Wildlife conserva-
tion’s commitment to these views is codied in the
Public Trust Doctrine — the common law notion that
underpins state governments’ authority over wildlife
in the United States and is present in some form in at
least 21 other countries (Treves et al. 2017).
The doctrine holds that wildlife is a public asset held
in trust by governments and managed on behalf of
citizen beneciaries (Freyfogle and Goble 2009). As
the U.S. Supreme Court concluded more than 100
years ago in the landmark case Geer v. Connecticut
(1896), the trustee-beneciary relationship between
a state and its citizens creates a duty “to enact such
laws as will best preserve the subject of the trust,
and secure its benecial use in the future.” Notably,
the case dealt with a defendant who transported
the carcasses of woodcock, ruffed grouse and quail
from one state to another. Ultimately, the court’s
decision hinged upon not whether wildlife was of
conservation value but whether wild animals could
be treated as an object of interstate commerce.
Geer illustrates a commitment to anthropocentrism
in U.S. conservation that continues to this day.
Indeed, management textbooks still depict the pur-
pose of wildlife management as producing “value”
or “impacts” desired by human stakeholders — so
long as their production does not infringe on our
ability to meet societal desires in the future (Decker
et al. 2012, Krausman and Cain III 2013).
Changing values challenge
our long-standing philosophy
As societal values shift, the public’s dissatisfaction
with wildlife agencies’ decision-making processes is
increasing. A growing number of ballot initiatives
and referenda seek to protect wild animals. Be-
tween 1940 and 1990, Americans approved just one
statewide ballot initiative that restricted the hunt-
ing or trapping of wildlife — a ban on dove hunting
in South Dakota, which was later repealed (Pacelle
1998). Since then, more than 50 state ballot mea-
sures have been initiated to protect the welfare of
wild and domestic animals. Most were bans on vari-
ous methods of hunting or trapping wildlife. More
than two-thirds (68 percent) were successful (The
Humane Society of the U.S. 2016). These numbers
support the notion that concern for wildlife welfare
is rising and people are frustrated with the tradi-
tional model of wildlife governance (Jacobson and
Decker 2008).
The lack of responsiveness by wildlife agencies to
animal welfare interests is not surprising. Wildlife
professionals often view conservation and animal
rights as antagonistic (Schmidt 1990, Muth and
Jamison 2000). The Wildlife Society’s standing
position statement, Animal Rights Philosophy
and Wildlife Conservation, describes the conict
between animal rights and wildlife conservation
as “profound.”
The authors found
that 37 percent of
respondents self-identified
as “conservationists”
and “animal rights
advocates.” Twenty-seven
percent self-identified as
“conservationists” and
“hunters.” Just 6 percent
self-identified only as
animal rights advocates;
just 8 percent only
identified as hunters. The
sampling protocol provides
for a margin of error of 2.7
percent at the 95 percent
confidence level. Figures
do not add to 100 percent
due to rounding error.
42 The Wildlife Professional, July/August 2017 © The Wildlife Society
Yet, that antagonistic view does not seem to be
shared by the general public — or even by most
self-identied conservationists, as the results of
our recent survey show. We polled more than
1,200 adults via KnowledgePanel, a representa-
tive online panel of U.S. residents recruited to take
part in survey research. We asked them to indicate
the extent to which they identied as hunters,
conservationists and animal rights advocates.
Although a plurality (37 percent) self-identied
as both conservationists and animal rights advo-
cates, far fewer (27 percent) self-identied as both
conservationists and hunters. Those identifying
as conservationists were more likely to identify as
animal rights advocates (r = 0.52) than as hunters
(r = 0.26).
These data suggest that, in contrast to its hunter-
centric origins, the U.S. conservation movement
today identies at least as much with animal rights
as with hunting. More than two-thirds (69 per-
cent) unequivocally endorsed the idea that wildlife
possess intrinsic value, an idea that runs counter
to anthropocentrism. To acknowledge the intrinsic
value of a living thing is to acknowledge an obliga-
tion to treat it with concern for its interests and
well-being (Vucetich et al. 2015).
Increased concern for animal welfare and wide-
spread acknowledgment that wildlife possesses
intrinsic value may be at odds with a vision of
wildlife conservation deeply rooted in public trust
thinking (Hare and Blossey 2014). The idea that
wildlife is merely a resource, an asset to be managed
to maximize human well-being, appears to leave
little room for considering its welfare. The conict is
liable to be acute because maximizing human ben-
ets is likely to come at a cost to the welfare of wild
animals (Simberloff 2013). Harvest practices such
as prairie-dog shoots, predator derbies and guided
trophy hunts that favor human recreation over
animal well-being are cases in point. Such practices
often catalyze public outrage and controversy. Wit-
ness the controversy generated by the recent killing
by an American trophy hunter of the African lion
known as Cecil (Nelson et al. 2016).
Yet, rising concern for the welfare of wildlife need
not translate into simple opposition to animal use or
traditional practices such as hunting. Rather, citizens
expect to see good reasons for why harming wild
animals is justied. Under anthropocentric thinking,
it is acceptable to exploit wildlife unless it is demon-
strated to be bad for humans. Unsustainable harvests,
for example, may deprive future generations of their
ability to hunt wildlife. Under
non-anthropocentric thinking, the
burden of proof shifts. Exploitation
is unacceptable unless adequate
reasons for it are provided.
Americans’ views about predator
management illustrate the implica-
tions of this shift. We found that
self-identied hunters, animal
rights advocates and conservation-
ists all tended to disagree with
the statement “predator control is
unacceptable.” Perhaps surpris-
ingly to wildlife professionals, only
25 percent of those who strongly
identify as animal rights advocates
agreed with that simple statement.
However, opposition to preda-
tor control may arise depending
on the context or the method
used. About half of animal rights
advocates, and even one in three
self-identied hunters, opposed
the removal of native preda-
tors that prey on threatened and
The authors
constructed groups by
pooling respondents
who self-identified
either “strongly” or
“very strongly” as
conservationists, animal
rights advocates or
hunters. Samples sizes
provided the following
margins of error:
conservationists, 5.3
percent; animal rights
advocates, 6.6 percent;
hunters, 6.6 percent, with
a 95% confidence level.
43www.wildlife.org
© The Wildlife Society
endangered species. This could have signicant
implications for the conservation of spotted owls
in the Pacic Northwest and caribou in southern
Alberta. All three groups tended to strongly oppose
the use of poison to control wildlife populations,
preferring non-lethal methods such as guard ani-
mals, scare devices and fertility control (Slagle et al.
2017). Such tendencies help explain why agencies
are experimenting with non-lethal methods even in
cases where lethal methods have been effective.
One nding in particular may provide a glimpse of
the future of wildlife conservation. Regardless of
their group identities, respondents had a widespread
tendency to acknowledge wildlife’s intrinsic value.
This was found among 69 percent of the general
population, and it was even higher among those who
strongly identied as hunters (79 percent), conser-
vationists (84 percent) and animal rights advocates
(87 percent). While these groups may understand
that acknowledgement in very different ways, non-
anthropocentrism appears to be an important point
of common ground (Vucetich et al. 2015).
The ndings suggest that policies that fail to
consider the welfare of wild animals will face
increasing public opposition. By angering most of
the people who call themselves “conservationists”
— people whose concern for wildlife extends to the
welfare of individual wild animals — such policies
could also undermine long-term efforts to broaden
the tent of conservation.
John A. Vucetich, PhD,
is a professor
in the School of Forest Resources and
Environmental Sciences at Michigan
Technological University.
Jeremy T. Bruskotter, PhD, is an
associate professor in the School of
Environment and Natural Resources at the
Ohio State University and past chair of the
Human Dimensions Working Group.
Michael Paul Nelson PhD, is a
professor in the Department of
Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon
State University.
