In a human changed world, many non-human organisms face a host of challenges related to their ability to migrate or remain in place. We argue for a right to a livable locality for non-human organisms further developing and applying arguments for a right to livability in the context of human climate migration. We argue that the right to a livable locality for non-human organisms emerges from the social practice of the international state system. We demonstrate that non-human organisms can be understood as a type of by-catch within the territorial net this social practice casts. Incorporating a right to a livable locality of non-human organisms into conservation practice is advantageous because it frees conservation from a dominant historical and normative evaluative scheme—in situ conservation. In a changing and warmer world, an over emphasis on in situ conservation makes conservation success difficult to achieve. A shift to livability considerations in conservation can guide normative evaluation in emergent conservation paradoxes and problems that arise due to environmental and climatic change.

This paper addresses a long-standing debate concerning the information-conveying function of sensory systems. The debate comes into focus with sensory systems in their most elemental form. These most basic systems consist of structurally distinct receptor (input) and effector (output) units. The receptor element has evolved under selective pressure exerted by an environmental stimulus and the effector has evolved under selective pressure exerted by a positive or negative affordance (a resource or threat). Take, for example, moth auditory systems dedicated to responding to the threat of predation posed by bats: the input side has been shaped by high-frequency sound, while the output (flight response) is adapted to the threat. When a sensory system has been shaped in this way by both a stimulus and an affordance, we face a question fraught with controversy. Does the system have the job of reporting on the stimulus or the affordance? Karen Neander has argued convincingly that the viewpoint from mainstream cognitive science supports the stimulus answer. The aim of this paper is to show that basic sensory systems also channel information about affordances. The argument of the paper draws on foundational assumptions of sensory ecology, a branch of biology concerned with the informational needs of organisms and how organisms have evolved to satisfy these needs. The viewpoint from sensory ecology complements the perspective familiar from cognitive science, revealing a critical role for sensory information about affordances.