Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Three Preconditions for Helping Wild Animals at Scale, published by William McAuliffe on June 13, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

Executive Summary

1. A theory of change specifies how a social movement will achieve the change it desires. The theory first posits preconditions that are necessary for meeting its goals. It then explains how the movement's activities help meet the preconditions. This report lays out the preconditions for the wild animal welfare movement to help wild animals at scale.

2. The movement's main goal is to promote the interests of individual nonhuman animals not under the direct control of humans as ends in themselves.

1. The movement's fundamental normative assumption is that speciesism is ethically unjustifiable.

2. The fundamental empirical assumption is that wild animals face a number of anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic threats.

3. Humans already have the ability to help some wild animals with some problems. But three preconditions must be developed in order to help a substantial fraction of wild animals with the conditions have the biggest negative impact on their welfare:

1. Valid measurement: Knowledge of (a) how to measure well-being among wild animals and (b) the causal relationships among the factors that influence it.

2. Technical Ability: Technology and skill to implement and evaluate interventions to help wild animals at scale, while minimizing unintended negative consequences.

3. Stakeholder Buy-In: Consent from stakeholders with veto power, and collaboration from stakeholders who can implement scalable interventions.

Who Should Read This Report

Newcomers to wild animal welfare who want a primer that is fairly comprehensive and up-to-date.

Readers of

A Landscape Analysis of Wild Animal Welfare who want a justification for the preconditions we use to contextualize the movement's ongoing activities.

Introduction

There is growing concern that wild animals do not receive the degree of moral consideration they deserve.[1] However, there is little common understanding of what minimal conditions must be met to improve wild animal welfare. The process of articulating a "theory of change" can help clarify assumptions about how a movement's activities will help it achieve its long-term goals (

Weiss, 1995). A theory of change is a "comprehensive description and illustration of how and why a desired change is expected to happen in a particular context" (

Center for Theory of Change, n.d.). In essence, one reasons backwards from the desired outcome to the

preconditions required to obtain that outcome, and in turn to the activities required to bring about those preconditions.

We claim that, at the broadest level of analysis, there are three preconditions for helping wild animals, which we label Valid Measurement, Technical Ability, and Stakeholder Buy-In. In our companion report (Elmore & McAuliffe, 2024), we describe ongoing activities to help meet these preconditions.

A Primer on Wild Animal Welfare

Defining Wild Animal Welfare

We define wild animal welfare as a movement that aims to promote the interests of individual nonhuman animals not under the direct control of humans as ends in themselves. In particular, the goal is to help at scale so that all wild animal populations can benefit and all major threats can be addressed.

The phrase "not under the direct control of humans" refers to both (a) "wild" animals, who live in habitats that were not intentionally constructed by humans, and (b) "liminal" animals, who are free-ranging within areas settled by humans (

Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011, p. 210). The term "interests" is intentionally broad, in order to accommodate disagreement about what welfare consists of. The emphasis on "individuals" distinguishes wild animal welfare from those that focus on collectives. For example, although m...