In a recent "Off the Leash" podcast, @charliemoores and @domdyer70 briefly touch on trophy hunting (TH), and they made some comments about emotions, ethics, and conservation that I thought it worth addressing in a thread. 1/ https://twitter.com/domdyer70/status/1391340482941394952

There is a tendency for the clashes between animal activists and conservation academics over TH to be portrayed by animal activists as clashes between ethics/emotions on one hand and a conservation/science perspective devoid of emotions and ethics on the other. 2/

We see examples of that rhetoric here. When the issue of emotions is first raised, Dominic says that "it's not emotions, it's ethics, and ethics matter." He says it's no longer ethical to kill gorillas and that it shouldn't be ethical to kill lions, elephants or rhinos. /3

Charlie later expresses annoyance at the accusations of being emotional coming from academics, arguing that "you can be emotional and be informed at the same time, and that seems to be the point some of these academics are missing." /4

He continues: "And I do think emotion is important. The way we respond to animals is emotional, and we should never forget that." Dominic shortly after mentions that if UK bans trophy imports, it will be "an ethical decision rather than a conservation decision." /5

Charlie then rounds off the subject by saying that "for me, the ethical argument overrides almost everything else, we have got to start looking as animals as sentient beings, and we do not have the right to fly over and kill something. To me it's black and white." /6

Two points need to be established in response to the podcast comments listed above:
1. Conservation is not devoid of ethics or anti-ethics.
2. Academics do have emotions about TH. /7

Let's do ethics first. It is a fallacy when Dominic says that banning TH imports will be an ethical decision rather than a conservation decision, or when Charlie says that the ethical argument overrides almost everything else, because conservation is also ethics. /8

What they argue for seems to be ethics views that combine deontology (a rights/duties view with emphasis on actions, roots in Kant) and virtue ethics (emphasis on moral character - or the trophy hunter's absence of such, roots in Aristotle). Perfectly valid ethical stances. /9

Conservation is not concerned with the inherent rightness/wrongness of killing or with the moral character of hunters. The conservation ethic is utilitarian (Jeremy Bentham), meaning that the ethical choice is generally the one that maximizes pleasure and minimizes suffering. /10

This means that conservationists argue against banning TH when evidence indicates that the likely consequence will be more animals dying in snares and from poison, to habitat loss, etc. and that communities will suffer financially or from increased HWC. /11

However, conservation also has certain aspects of deontological ethics and anti-imperialism, as a key conservation argument is that local communities should have a right to manage their own wildlife as they deem best, and that their expertise in doing so should be respected. /12

So to sum up this part, "TH or no TH" is not a conflict between conservation and ethics. It is a conflict between different paradigms of ethics, and no philosopher has ever proven that virtue ethics or deontology are inherently "better" or "more ethical" than utilitarianism. /13

Now to the point about emotions.

Academics sometimes bring up emotions as a negative trait of critics when it comes to TH. The problem here, I think, is one of not being precise, because conservationists who work with TH have plenty of emotions about TH. /14

What academics mean is that emotions that aren't sufficiently informed by knowledge and experience can be harmful. Naive empathy can be harmful. Bringing home a fawn left by its mother, for example, or wanting TH banned while knowing nothing of the likely consequences. /15

TH critics often perceive @AmyDickman4 as one of the four horsemen of the TH apocalypse, and so she must be one of those academics without emotions or ethics, right? Well, read this article and then tell me that Amy is not emotionally involved... /16 https://scienceplusstory.com/science-celebrities-a-call-for-partnership/

When conservation scientists who work in Africa with the local communities and wildlife accuse animal activists of being emotional, it does not mean that they themselves are not emotionally engaged in the lives of animals. Far from it. /17

What it often means is that they have experienced both the emotions associated with seeing photos and videos of trophy hunters behaving abhorrently AND the emotions of experiencing first-hand what happens to animals in parts of Africa where animals are not protected for TH. /18

Many conservation scientists who speak out against bans on TH do not have LESS emotions about this subject than animal activists; they have MORE, because they have seen and experienced the horrors of both TH and the absence of TH. /19

These were some of my recent thoughts about emotions and ethics in the trophy hunting discourse. Hope it can inform the debate a bit. /20