Managed relocation of species raises complex and often novel ethical questions for scientists and policy makers. At the most general level, it evokes foundational philosophical/ethical concerns regarding humans’ place in nature, including whether such anticipatory interventions are permissible and/or obligatory. Of equal significance is another broad class of questions surrounding the goals of biological conservation under global climate change, including the concern that a focus on managed relocation -- as an adaptive response to human climate modification -- might distract conservation scientists and policy makers from strategies for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. There are also value-laden questions surrounding the choice of conservation targets (e.g., Are populations/species the fundamental unit of concern, or should the protection of native ecosystems be at the center of conservation efforts?); and more specific ethical questions regarding the practice of managed relocation, including selecting candidate populations/species for translocation and the potential harms and risks relocation may impose on both target organisms and “receiving” ecosystems. Finally, the case of managed relocation challenges conservation biologists and ecologists to consider whether pursuing this strategy is an entailment of being a “good” or ethical scientific professional in the era of climate change, and whether such an activist conservation effort is permitted, prohibited, or obligatory for biologists and ecologists seeking to uphold the professional values of scientific organizations like the ESA.
We will address two main questions: What ethical issues are prompted by managed relocation as a practice? What is the most effective way to address these complex ethical questions?
Results/Conclusions
We will first describe and defend the framework of “ecological ethics” – a pragmatic approach to ethical analysis and decision making in ecology and conservation biology (Minteer and Collins 2005a; 2005b; 2008). We will then show how this framework provides a way to identify and set priorities for the ethical concerns raised by managed relocation. As a process, ecological ethics is superior to other approaches in applied ethics in its ability to integrate a range of value positions, empirical case details, and the professional norms of ecology and conservation biology in a holistic decision framework.