Care for the Wild in the Anthropocene

Animal ethical approaches often focus on certain individual animal features and capabilities for attributing moral standing to them. These features are usually considered from a moral point of view as not differing for wild, semi-wild, and domesticated animals. However, several authors have argued for more relational approaches, in which relationships between humans, human society, and animals are taken into account, implying that wildness may be considered, in a sense, as a morally relevant aspect. This approach is especially relevant in the Anthropocene, since this new geological epoch is characterized by a significant impact on the part of human society on global geological and ecological systems, and thus on many wild and semi-wild animals. In this chapter some conceptual approaches to domestication and wildness are discussed, and it is argued that we should consider wild animals as entities that are highly and critically dependent on the environment, which should be considered as a network of biotic and abiotic elements, whether that environment is natural or human. Accordingly, it is argued that we need a contextual care approach, as an environmental virtue ethics, implying an attitude of care for the threatened natural environment of wild animals in the Anthropocene.