Biodiversity has become one of the most important conservation values that drive our ecological management and directly inform our environmental policy. This paper highlights the dangers of strategically appropriating concepts from ecological sciences and also of uncritically inserting them into conservation debates as unqualified normative landmarks. Here, I marshal evidence from a cutting-edge research program in microbial ecology, which shows that if species richness is our major normative target, then we are faced with extraordinary ethical implications. This example challenges our (...) well-received beliefs about biodiversity and it invites us to critically rethink the nature of this concept so that a more robust understanding of biodiversity and of its role in conservation policy could emerge. (shrink)

The ecosystem services argument is a highly publicised instrumental argument for protecting biodiversity. I develop a new objection to this argument based on the lack of a causal connection from global species losses to local ecosystem changes. I survey some alternative formulations of services arguments, including ones incorporating option value or a precautionary principle, and show that they do not fare much better than the standard version. I conclude that environmental thinkers should rely less on ecosystem services as a means (...) to defend biodiversity, and that attention should be focused on additional types of value which might be attributed to global biodiversity. (shrink)

The introduction of new genetic material into wild populations, using novel biotechnology, has the potential to fortify populations against existential threats, and, controversially, create wild genetically modified populations. The introduction of new genetic variation into populations, which will have an ongoing future in areas of conservation interest, complicates long-held values in conservation science and park management. I discuss and problematize, in light of genetic intervention, what I consider the three core goals of conservation science: biodiversity, ecosystem services, and wilderness. This (...) uneasy relationship, however, does not forgo the use of such interventions. I argue there is a case for the application of this technology within some interpretations of the moral frameworks of wilderness and biodiversity, despite apparent conflict between these values and the technology, and the possibility that this technology's use displays some limitations of the ecosystem services framework. Ultimately, the advent of biotechnology assisted restoration highlights the need for us to reevaluate our ethical concepts of conservation at times of global environmental and technological change. (shrink)

This paper explores interactions between ecological science and conservation values in the biodiversity-ecosystem function debate of the 1990–2000s. The scientific debate concerned the interpretation of observed correlations between species richness and ecosystem properties like primary productivity in experimental ecosystems. The debate over the causal or explanatory role of species richness was presumed to have implications for conservation policy, and the use of such research to support policy recommendations generated hostility between rival groups of ecologists. I argue that the debate was (...) due in part to the adoption of a broad conception of biodiversity as a goal and value in conservation politics and ethical debates, and the ecologists who questioned the causal efficacy of species richness were also suggesting problems with this goal. I characterize what I call the “uneasy consensus” established by BEF researchers in the late 2000s, discuss roles for values in BEF research, and suggest that this episode shows that ecological science can itself be an important site for ethical debates about conservation values. (shrink)

This review provides an overview of the ethics of extinctions with a focus on the Western analytical environmental ethics literature. It thereby gives special attention to the possible philosophical grounds for Michael Soulé’s assertion that the untimely ‘extinction of populations and species is bad’. Illustrating such debates in environmental ethics, the guiding question for this review concerns why – or when – anthropogenic extinctions are bad or wrong, which also includes the question of when that might not be the case (...) (i.e. which extinctions are even desirable). After providing an explanation of the disciplinary perspective taken (section “Introduction”), the concept of extinction and its history within that literature are introduced (section “Understanding extinction”). Then, in section “Why (or when) might anthropogenic extinctions be morally problematic?”, different reasons for why anthropogenic extinctions might be morally problematic are presented based on the loss of species’ value, harm to nonhuman individuals, the loss of valuable biological variety and duties to future generations. This section concludes by also considering cases where anthropogenic extinctions might be justified. Section “How to respond to extinctions?” then addresses a selection of topics concerning risks and de-extinction technologies. Finally, the section on “Extinction studies” introduces other viewpoints on the ethics of extinction from the extinction studies literature, followed by the “Conclusion”. (shrink)