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Human activity is now having a defining influence on global systems. The Anthropocene epoch requires revisiting our ethical presuppositions to understand our relationship to the earth's life support systems. The Land Ethic of Aldo Leopold proposes an ethic that is diachronic, holistic, and biocentric, in contrast to the synchronic, individualist, and anthropocentric axioms of mainstream bioethics. I argue that these features of the Land Ethic make it more suitable to engage with the ethics of healthcare resource allocation in the Anthropocene; that understanding sustainability in a Land Ethical fashion requires that we view it as placing a side-constraint on all permissible healthcare resource use such that this use remains within planetary boundaries; and outline how this might re-shape debates around healthcare resource allocation., (© 2024 The Author(s). Bioethics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The restoration community continues to discuss what constitutes good environmental stewardship. One area of tension is the extent to which the well‐being of wild animals should inform restoration efforts. We discuss three ways that the perspective of wild animal welfare can augment restoration ecology: strengthening people's relationship with nature, reinforcing biotic integrity, and reducing mechanistic uncertainty. The animal welfare movement elevates sentient animals as stakeholders and explores how environmental context directly impacts the well‐being of individuals. Viewing wild animals through this lens may encourage people to think and act with empathy and altruism. Second, we incorporate animal welfare into the concept of biotic integrity for ecological and ethical reasons. Restoring ecosystem processes may enhance animal welfare, and vice versa. Alternatively, there may be a trade‐off between these factors, requiring local decision‐makers to prioritize between restoring ecosystem function and promoting individuals' well‐being. We conclude by discussing how welfare can impact population recovery, thereby adding insights about mechanisms underpinning restoration objectives. Ultimately, restoration ecologists and proponents of wild animal welfare could enjoy a productive union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aldo Leopold, in 'The Land Ethic,' made 2 important contributions to conservation ethics: he emphasized the community and ecosystem levels of organization and he explicitly included people as members of the biotic community. Leopold's writings remain eloquent, inspirational, and influential, but the ideas he describes are inherently complex, and ecological science has continued to evolve since 'The Land Ethic' was published in 1949. We used 4 sets of quotations from Leopold's essays to develop our commentary on the meaning of and challenges in interpreting his work and to explore the ongoing development of conservation ethics: the 'A-B cleavage' (Leopold's description of the contrast between utilitarian value versus a broader definition of value in nature), 'land health' and the rightness of human action, the right of all species to continued existence in natural populations 'at least in spots,' and humans as 'plain member[s] and citizen[s]' of the 'land-community.' We define the broader function of land and land health in 'The Land Ethic' as including completeness, dynamic stability, and self-renewal in a way that incorporates the needs of humans and all other species. We argue that the consequences of implementing Leopold's land ethic include multiple conservation goals nested within an overall systems approach and that conservation science must clarify the implications of Leopold's ethic by quantitatively investigating and defining large-scale, system-level ecological sustainability. At this scale, land use will encompass areas ranging from large expanses of wilderness to areas dominated by humans. La Sustentabilidad Ecológica como el Cuarto Hito en el Desarrollo de la Ética de la Conservación [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human demands on nature have increased due to our burgeoning population. The applications of scientific knowledge to the development of increasingly powerful technologies and consumptive lifestyles by more and more people have created a modern category of human-caused disaster—stealth disasters. Stealth disasters—such as agriculturally-induced soil erosion and release of unprecedented amounts of greenhouse gases into Earth's atmosphere—tend to have protracted, unobvious onsets; do not necessarily have dramatic manifestations; and often do not attract public attention until they reach a stage approaching catastrophic consequences. At this late stage it is difficult or impossible to undo damage. Scientists tend to be among the first to understand the physical causes and notice the developments of stealth disasters and their risks and yet scientific knowledge is not enough to prevent or mitigate them. As we search for ways to deal with stealth disasters, the concept of “land health” assembled by the prominent conservationist and author, Aldo Leopold (1887–1948), can, in normative terms, provide an ecologically grounded example of nature in good condition toward which society can aim. Evidence of the reverse—symptoms of land illness—can provide a checklist for risk analysis and management that helps guide people away from harm-causing attitudes and activities and toward beneficial outcomes. Leopold's criteria of land health motivated by a land ethic that incorporates the whole of nature may be applied at geographic scales ranging from local to global as a framework for contemporary risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Great Plains land ethic is shaped by an intimate knowledge of and appreciation for the evolution, ecology, and aesthetics of the plains landscape. The landscape evokes a sense of wonder and mystery suggested by the word “sacrament.” The biblical concept of “covenant” points to God as a community-forming power, a creative process that has evolved into the earth community to which we humans belong. In contrast to an anthropocentric ethic which emphasizes human dominion over nature, a Theo-centric land ethic seeks a balance, reflected in Genesis 1–3, between humans who are members of the earth community and moral agents accountable to God for the earth. A land ethic identifies concrete practices of metanoia and healing: agricultural practices to address the loss and degradation of soil; conservation and protection of water sources; utilization of wind and solar energy; and prescribed burning to restore processes vital to the prairie ecosystem. The concept of subsidiarity suggests that practices of metanoia and healing are a combination of wise public policy balanced by personal, family, church, business, and community responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To reach its potential wildlife management needs a coherent purpose. Traditional divisions between science, society, and nature, however, create conflicts between responsibility to science, the public, and nature. These divisions emerged as early as Plato's (400 BC) allegory of the cave. In Plato's allegory human society existed inside a cave formed by its own delusions, and a philosopher or scientist could leave the cave and apprehend reality in nature. Wildlife management's simultaneous responsibility to public preferences, objective truth, and biotic integrity provides the foundation for a conservation worldview capable of transcending the divisions embodied in Plato's allegory. In this paper we deconstruct the conflicted worldview standing on that foundation and describe a land community-based worldview for wildlife management that could replace it. The transition from traditional views of science, society, and nature to a land community worldview requires 1) changing scientific stewardship from seeking objective truth to seeking credible truth, 2) changing political stewardship from following societal dictates to representing wildlife within the land community, and 3) changing ethical stewardship from protecting biotic integrity to fighting permanent closure of land community boundaries. Adopting a land community worldview for wildlife management requires relinquishing the illusion of absolute objectivity and a fall from status as neutral arbiters of knowledge but provides a means for honorably seeking reliable knowledge, serving the public and respecting the land community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many researchers have implicated human population density in species endangerment, but these correlative studies do not demonstrate causality. We propose that hypotheses implicating human population density in wildlife endangerment at global and national scales owe their public and academic currency as thoroughly to inductive reasoning and repetition as to scientific experimentation. It follows that alternative research hypotheses generated from the same facts should provide equally tenable results. Household density provides such an alternative hypothesis and is growing faster than human population density. We used linear multiple regression models to demonstrate that household density provides a viable alternative statistical hypothesis to human population density for explaining species endangerment (household model, r² = 0.85; population model, r² = 0.84). We then suggest adopting a household perspective for biodiversity conservation because 1) social norms and practices render a household approach to conservation more pragmatic than a human population perspective and 2) shifting the focus toward households could facilitate movement from a human-versus-nature ethic to a humans-situated-within-nature ethic (e.g., a land ethic). Wildlife managers and researchers concerned about the negative influence humans have on biodiversity should consider grounding research, theory, and policy decisions in the dynamics of human households as an alternative to human population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful lobbying against certain hunting practices by animal-welfare and animal-rights groups and a steady decline in hunter recruitment, retention, and numbers raise legitimate concerns regarding the future of hunting and its relationship to wildlife management. The nonhunting, non-animal-rights-advocate majority will determine the fate of hunting. Thus, a successful hunting ethic must be logically consistent and intuitively appealing to this moderate majority. This shared ethic could encourage cultural, political, and economic support for wildlife management from both hunters and nonhunters alike. In light of this goal, I argue that 3 dominant hunting ethics--the naturalness hypothesis, the land ethic, and the sporting ethic--fail to justify hunting or place it in a shared context with modern society, and I suggest an alternative ethic that combines Aldo Leopold's vision of an expanding community with traditional utilitarian and rights-based evaluations of ethical criteria within an n-dimensional moral framework. This conceptualization of an ethical system would allow the use of tools applicable to systems analysis in analyzing moral issues and would foster communicative practices capable of creating a more inclusive community. Further, it can both create and elucidate the ethical space shared by the moderate majority and hunters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]