Mark Sagoff
"Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce"

Sagoff's argument for why Animal Activists can't be Environmentalists and vice-versa:

According to animal activists, animals have rights (Reagan) or interests in not suffering equal to ours (Singer)
Nature treats animals worse than does humanity: "Mother nature makes Frank Perdue [the chicken magnate] look like a saint."

Nature undermines the rights of animals by killing them in far greater numbers than do humans; nature "ruthlessly(!!-can nature be ruthless?) limits animal populations by killing virtually every individual before maturity." (See p. 320)
Nature visits animals with suffering that exceeds animal suffering at the hands of humans: predation, starvation, disease, cold, parasitism, etc.
Animals--if they could choose--would prefer life in the barnyard (free food and shelter) to life in the wild.
This premise may not be needed for Sagoff's argument; even if humans treat animals worse than does nature, if nature treats animals badly we could mitigate that treatment (and should--Sagoff argues--if we are animal activists)

Thus to protect their rights and interests in not suffering, animal activists should be committed to getting animals out of the wild.

For example, animal activists should provide animals with contraceptive care, heat animals' dens and put out food to keep them from freezing and starving in the winter.
Animal activists should lobby to replace wilderness areas and national parks with more managed and humane environments (farms and ranches).
Animal activists should try to prevent predation:

One animal activists philosopher explicitly realizes this: Steve Sapontzis (editor of Between the Species) says: "We are morally obligated to prevent predation whenever we can do so without occasioning as much or more unjustified suffering than the predation would create." Morals, Reason, and Animals (1987)

But such a proposal is an anti-environmentalist conclusion:

It sacrifices the authenticity, integrity, and wildness of whole ecosystems (the concern of environmentalists) to protect individual animals (the concern of animal activists).

Therefore, animal activists can't consistently be environmentalists and vice-versa.
Additionally, since the policy recommendations that follow from animal activists' theories (about the moral status of animals) are outrageously silly and absurd, these theories of animal rights (Regan) and animal equality (Singer) are false.
- Sagoff does not say the above, but it is suggested by his article.

For a journal article on "Policing Nature" click here.

Questions:

Is it true that life in nature is worse than life in a lab or a factory farm? Can nature be cruel or ruthless? (No, if this involves intention. )
Which is better for animals? A domestic easy life or tough wild life? What would animals prefer? What is most in their interests? Which animals (wild or domesticated)? Is the integrity of animals undermined by the domesticated life?
*Can animal activists respond by claiming they oppose only human caused animal suffering and killing? What could be the justification for this restriction? Can only humans violate rights, but not nature? (Regan argues that because we only have a duty to prevent rights violations, we only have a duty to prevent human-caused animal suffering and death.)
Do (wild? domesticated?) animals have only negative rights (to not be interfered with) but no positive rights (to be provided assistance)? If so, we could have a duty not to kill them, but no duty to come to their assistance in the wild. But then the rights of humans and animals would seem to be quite different.
What should animal activists think about the value of predation in nature? Bad? Evil? Can they believe it is neutral? (No?)

Differences between Animal Activists and Environmentalists

Animal Activists	Environmentalists
Animal equality and animal rights	Ecological integrity
Singer/Regan	Leopold
SPCA/PETA	Sierra Club/SCCCL
Humanitarian ethics of concern for animal suffering and death	Ecological ethics/environmental ethic: Respect for and admiration for functioning of natural systems
Extent of moral standing: Stops at mammals (or higher animals such as vertebrates)	Moral standing for: Animals, plants, ecosystems, species, natural processes, nature, Earth herself
Individualism (happiness and welfare of individual animals-e.g., this California Condor)	Holism (nonindividuals like populations, species and ecosystems are what is important)
Anti-hunting	Pro-hunting (if helps prevent degraded ecosystems)
Focus on domestic animals	Focus on wild animals
Cows and grizzly bears are equal	Cows and grizzly bears are not equal
Plentiful species like deer (as important as endangered species)	Endangered species like red wolves (are more important)
Animal suffering and death an evil	Animal suffering and death not an evil as a fundamental part of a valuable nature
So predation is a bad thing? Oppose predator restoration?	Predation is good; we need to reintroduce predators
Favor contraceptive care for wild animals?	Oppose contraceptive care as would undermine nature's integrity