Wildlife conservation in churchyards: a case-study in ethical judgements

Groups promoting wildlife in churchyards, or other sites, discover that they face normative questions that have no scientific answers. The language of management is used for handling these questions, but this metaphor has unhelpful associations with predetermined goals, a culture of control and self-centredness. Using a case-study approach, conflicts between conserving natural entities or natural processes (e.g. transplanting scarce plants); between caring for the individual organism or for the system (e.g. felling trees); and between conserving the natural or the cultural heritage (e.g. repointing walls) are examined. These cases of conflicts of duty illustrate the value of attention to circumstances, proportionality, and compromise. The social mechanisms of moral debate include legal protection and the power of stories to give meaning and vision. Ethics is a communal activity. By listening to others and attending to nature our sensibilities will become more refined and our ethical judgements will develop.