The Rights of Others

Animal welfare is perhaps the most important topic of conversation among zoo and aquarium professionals.  We should constantly be striving to find ways to improve standards of care for the animals that live in our institutions, both physically and behaviorally.  

Public conversations about animal welfare are often confused with those concerning another topic, one that the public might be a fair bit more familiar with - animal rights.

Many people use the terms interchangeably, but there are major differences between the zoo.

Zoos, aquariums, and other animal caretakers subscribe to a worldview of animal welfare.  Welfare is a scientific, data-driven analysis of an animal's well-being.  An animal's welfare is situated on a continuum of positive to negative.  An animal welfare worldview is one that holds that humans have an obligation to continually try to be better stewards of animals, learning how to do better meet their needs.

Animal rights, in contrast, is a more emotionally-driven philosophy that believes that non-human animals should be given the same legal rights and considerations as humans.  Under this philosophy, it is not our place to treat animals well, because thy are not ours to treat in one way or another.  Any exercise of human control over animals is a form of exploitation.  A believer in animal rights would not support eating animals or their products (milk, eggs, even honey), wearing animal products such as wool or fur, or the experimentation of animals for medicinal reasons.  Keeping animals under human care, such as in zoos or aquariums would also be opposed.  Taking this philosophy to its full conclusion would mean no keeping of pets.

A lot of people use "animal rights" to denote any support for any positive change for animals or treat them well.  I've met a few zookeepers who describe themselves as "animal rights activists," even though that is diametrically opposed to what they do at the zoo.  I had a college friend who swore that she was an animal rights activist - even though she was a devoted equestrian.  Animal rights does not hold with sitting on the back of another animal and being carried around for fun and exercise.

Animal rights isn't just opposed to horseback-riding, farming, and zookeeping.  It also can prove problematic to reconcile with conservation.  Wildlife conservation is about the greater good of a species, which can sometimes mean hard choices with negative impacts for individuals.  Reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone can negatively impact the "rights" of elk to live free from fear of being eaten.  Culling invasive or overpopulated species may improve the health of the ecosystem, but deprive those individual animals of the "right" to life.  Taking animals into captivity to start a breeding program takes away their "right" to liberty.

For these reasons, among others, I've never been able to subscribe to this worldview.  I firmly believe that the well-being of animals should be based on scientific fact, measurable outcomes, and a commitment to the greater good, of the ecosystem, the species, and, when possible, the individual - but in that order.  That's why I believe in animal welfare.  Whether they are familiar with the term or not, so do most people I know, too.