Ethical Implications Of Nonhuman Animals

Human beings have the ability to understand and evaluate the destruction and anxiety that they could cause to other beings. That is why humans are obligated to care, protect and actively intervene to help ecosystems at risk, but humans have managed to destroy habitats and lead many species to their extinction. The large-scale destruction of forests and other natural ecosystems, the extinction of nonhuman animals and the various types of pollution has led to an increase in the rate of biodiversity loss. Therefore, anthropogenic environmental changes have blurred the borders of diverse local ecosystems due to climate change- forced dislocation of animals, which will invade non-native biological communities to survive. This dislocation to non-

Even though, the viability of those past categories need to be assessed, categories, in general, are a necessity for the understanding of the moral basis of human- nonhuman animal relations in the Anthropocene. This brings in the forefront another division with its own ethical issues, which is the one between wild and domesticated nonhuman animals. These two categories that deal nonhuman animals based on whether nonhuman animals' behavioral responses have been successfully modified to accept human presence, or not, come with their own ethical questions. If the wild animal category is being defined by the lack of a, behaviorally, modified acceptance to human presence through the long term process of domestication, then the question is whether is not ethical for wild animals to be kept in captivity, where human presence is forced upon them. On the other hand, it does not mean that human presence is not forced on domesticated animals, since then the question becomes whether domestication was non-ethical in the first place. This brings back questions about nonhuman animal rights, specifically, whether nonhuman animals have any rights on their own freedom, and questions about the division between the welfare

That, brings back questions about the division between wild and domesticated animals, and whether those categories are practical or even ethical, in an era where those boarders are becoming, increasingly, obscured. This is why Keulartz (2016: np), ponders whether zoos, sanctuaries, or other settings that keep animals captive, fulfill a conservation role that is not ethically or practically justified. At the same time, settings for captive animals, many times, fail to maintain a sustainable genetic pool since captive populations lose genetic diversity, due to unsuccessful breeding, small populations, stressed animals and because of a variety of other reasons. As Lacy (2012:19), have stated, these circumstances lead to either declining populations, declining gene diversity or a combination of both. Regardless, it is recognized that certain animals would not survive the effects of climate change without those settings, but the question about nonhuman animals' rights on their freedom still remains, especially, since for these animals it is a matter of extinction or captivity. How can captivity be reconciled with a nonhuman animal's right on its freedom, and in respect to its wild or domesticated status, is a complex ethical issue, particularly, when the definition of captivity is not applied