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8 A Practical Ethics for Ecologists and Biodiversity Managers WITH JAMES P. COLLINS A Gap in Applied Ethics The previous chapter shows that environmental ethics has often neglected empirical methods of inquiry, featuring few projects that connect, in an effective way, the core methodologies of the humanities and the social sciences. This posture, as well as the ideological tendencies of much environmental ethics described in the first part of this book, has kept the field from reaching its full potential as branch of practical philosophy that can effectively inform sound environmental policy and management decisions. For the concepts and arguments of environmental ethics to gain greater traction in the realm of environmental policy and practice, it has been argued in this book that the field needs to adopt a more naturalistic and pluralistic strategy, one that surrenders long-standing ethical dogmas in favor of a more experimental and pragmatic view of moral principles in human environmental experience—and a more context-driven and deliberative framing of these principles in decision situations requiring ethical reflection, public discussion, and reasoned judgment. This chapter builds from the problem-oriented and empirically tempered applications in Chapters 6 and 7 by focusing on the need for environmental ethics to contribute to resolving ethical dilemmas that emerge in the realm of the life sciences (broadly construed), particularly the domains of ecological research and conservation practice. Work in these areas can often raise complex and unique practical and philosophical problems, issues and questions that require serious attention from ethicists, not to mention scientists and professionals active in these fields. Ecological field research, for example, can involve experimental techniques with the potential to harm sentient and nonsentient organisms as well as affect the structure and function of higher levels A Practical Ethics for Ecologists and Biodiversity Managers / 141 of organization,such as populations and ecosystems.The management of biological resources in zoos, aquaria, botanical gardens, and natural areas can likewise involve decisions and practices that raise a variety of ethical concerns regarding the welfare or good of nonhuman individuals, populations, and ecosystems. Yet in general, ethicists have not focused on how ecological research and conservation management efforts can raise ethical concerns about these activities’ impact on wild populations and ecosystems. This is true even though environmental ethicists frequently draw upon concepts and principles from ecology and conservation biology when making normative arguments for protecting those very same species and systems. For good reason, most environmental ethicists, when they conceptualize and discuss environmental threats, have been much more concerned with primary and more widely recognized environmental insults, such as industrial pollution, resource overexploitation and overconsumption, urban and suburban sprawl, overpopulation, and, most recently, the ecological and human consequences of extracting and burning fossil fuels. Although these issues rightly remain at the core of ethical concerns about human impacts on the environment, it is increasingly clear that ecological research and management activities themselves can have significant consequences for the well-being or integrity of animals, plants, and ecosystems and thus are deserving of explicit ethical scrutiny. But because environmental ethicists’ attention has traditionally been placed elsewhere, and because the field has also developed largely as a theoretical discipline focused on the foundations of environmental values rather than as a practical discipline devoted to value clarification and trade-offs in ecological decision making, a considerable gulf runs between academic environmental ethics and the real-world dilemmas and issues that often confront practicing ecologists and conservation managers. This gap, moreover, further highlights the greater success of bioethics vis-à-vis environmental ethics as a branch of applied philosophy. Biomedical researchers and clinicians, when they confront difficult ethical questions in their work, can turn to bioethicists and their literature for scholarly insight and practical guidance . Bioethics has a strong institutional presence in hospitals and research centers ; scientists and clinicians often can and sometimes must consult directly with ethics committees or qualified bioethical personnel in their home institutions. Bioethics is embedded within these research and clinical communities, providing a recognized forum for the discussion of ethical issues, an established scholarly area of research yielding new research findings, and a support network to assist researchers and clinicians in making practical ethical decisions. No analogous subfield of applied or practical ethics, however, is devoted expressly to investigating the special kind of ethical issues raised within ecological research and conservation management contexts. Environmental ethics certainly comes closest to filling this need, but, as stated above, it has not developed any special focus on the design and conduct of...

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