Exploring the Borderlands Between Wild and Non-Wild Animals: Wildlife Law and Policy in Transition

Abstract

Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy, 18: xxx-xxx, 2015 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1388-0292 print / 1548-1476 online Exploring the Borderlands between Wild and Non-Wild Animals: Wildlife Law and Policy in Transition G EOFFREY W ANDESFORDE -S MITH * L YNETTE A. H ART ** Since we now live in a world in which to one degree or another all non-human animals are managed, what is the value of the age old distinction between wild and non-wild animals? Come to think of it, where and when did this distinction originate and come to be seen as useful, and what was it used for, and by whom? 1 Is it a distinction that can be sustained or ought to be sustained if, as appears to be the case, the standards of care we expect to be applied to humans, most notably a general preference for humaneness and a specific prohibition on individual cruel treatment, are increasingly coming to be seen as reasonable for animals, too, whether they are wild or non-wild 2 and most especially if they have been shown to have some degree of intelligence? 3 * Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA. Email: gawsmith@ucdavis.edu. ** Professor, Department of Population Health and Reproduction, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, CA 95616. Email: lahart@ucdavis.edu. Edmund Leach, Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse, 2 A NTHROZOOS 151- 165 (1989) (reprinting Edmund Leach, Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse, in N EW D IRECTIONS IN THE S TUDY OF L ANGUAGE 23-63 (E. Lenneberg ed. 1964)). See also John Halverson, Animal Categories and Terms of Abuse, 11 M AN (new series) 505-516 (1976); Elizabeth Lawrence, Introduction to ‘Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse’ by Edmund Leach and ‘Animal Categories and Terms of Abuse’ by John Halverson, 2 A NTHROZOOS 148-150 (1976). The history and consequences of the early scientific enthusiasm in Britain for classifying and categorizing animals are traced in H ARRIET R ITVO , T HE P LATYPUS & THE M ERMAID & O THER F IGMENTS OF THE C LASSIFYING I MAGINATION (1997). An American perspective appears in Etienne Benson, From Wild Lives to Wildlife and Back, 16 E NVTL . H IST . 418-422 (2011). Animals were part and parcel of the massive movements of people around the world that occurred in the nineteenth century, broadly treated in the case of the major British dominions in T HOMAS D UNLAP , N ATURE & THE E NGLISH D IASPORA : E NVIRONMENT & H ISTORY IN THE U NITED S TATES , C ANADA , A USTRALIA , & N EW Z EALAND (1999), and more recently assessed in the context of the acclimatization movement in Harriet Ritvo, Going Forth and Multiplying: Animal Acclimatization and Invasion, 17 E NVTL . H IST . 404-414 (2012). I RUS B RAVERMAN , W ILD L IFE : T HE I NSTITUTION OF N ATURE (2015); W HAT C AN A NIMAL L AW L EARN FROM E NVIRONMENTAL L AW ? (Randall Abate ed., forthcoming 2015). F RANS DE W AAL , T HE A GE OF E MPATHY : N ATURE ’ S L ESSONS FOR A K INDER S OCIETY (2009). De Waal was the keynote speaker at a conference organized by Dr. Ted Geier and the Interdisciplinary Animal Studies Research Group at UC Davis in the Fall of 2014. Although the focus was much broader than the wild/non-wild distinction, early abstracts for versions of the articles in this issue can be accessed from the conference website, http://www.nonhumans.org/november-2014-conference. Similar themes were explored at an earlier conference, held at Yale University in December 2013. See Personhood Beyond the Human, http://www.nonhumanrights.net.