Nonhuman Animal Property: Reconciling Environmentalism and Animal Rights

Abstract

The concept of property has been the focus of recent debate in environmental ethics. Proponents of private property rights argue that private owners are likely to preserve natural areas and endangered species because they alone have to bear the costs associated with environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Others argue that property rights in natural resources are limited by obligations to do justice to the interests nonowners have in “common goods.” In what follows I will broaden the debate about property in environmental ethics by suggesting a very different way that private ownership could help protect natural areas and the nonhuman animals that inhabit them. As a check on human intervention in natural areas that is destructive of habitat, a nonhuman animal property rights regime (structured along the lines I suggest) can secure the maintenance of ecosystem stability and ensure the vital interests of nonhuman animals are respected. The key moral demands of environmentalism and animal rights can be met by extending the scope of property ownership beyond the human species to other sentient animals that have a vital interest in using natural goods.