Conservation as Compassion, a 101 guide for the Chronically online Utilitarian .

This is an article that will seem strange for most people, (xkcd 2071?), in It I will try to argue a point that may seem self evident, that If you care about the wellbeing of wild animals, you should be in favor of conservation and environmentalism. Now while everyone can agree humans environmental destruction directly harms animals via pollution, habitat loss etc. Some people upon coming to the conclusion that the harm that happens to animals matters morally even if it’s “natural” and the term “Appeal to Nature Fallacy” , having heard the proverb of the Yellowstone Wolves* or similar warnings about previous times humans interfered in nature, and having rejected environmentalism despite the Chesterton fence arguments, even calling for the systemic destruction of natural landscapes and expansion of human land use on a larger scale*, Here I will like to explain to these people, why nature conservation and restoration is generally beneficial and likely reduces wild animal suffering, at least in the median to long term, and when in doubt an environmentalist perspective should be taken.

Climate change and cold blooded animals

One of the simplest mechanisms environmental harm could harm wild animals systemically is climate changes effect on ectotherm or “cold blooded” animals metabolism, under warmer conditions ectotherms grow faster, and die faster, leading to more generations, and more deaths of ectotherms per unit of time. According to Latitudinal variation in lifespan within species is explained by the metabolic theory of ecology , under a 1.1 degree Celsius increase ectotherm lifespans will shorten 3-19%, and for a 2.9 degree Celsius shorten 8-42%. This trend occurs both between and within species. It is worth reminding that the vast majority of animals alive today are ectotherms, as well as that alongside burning fossil fuels, methane emissions from ruminant agriculture and dumps, destruction of natural foliage, and soil loss all contribute.

Expansion of the the Ocean and melting.

currently 71% of the world is covered by the ocean, but it contains an estimated 78% of animal biomass. As climate change grows the ocean through Ice melting and warmer water expanding, We should expect these new ocean patches to contain more animals then the coastal land they displace. Additionally these new waterways would be shallow waters near the coast, which tend to have more more biomass in tropical regions. In a similar vein we should be concerned about melting ice. 10% of the worlds land and at least part of the year 9% of the worlds ocean, is covered with ice. And though algae does grown under Ice, the reduced light availability seems to be a limiting factor.

Terrestrial NPP and Climate change

NPP ( Net Primary Productivity), Is a measure of the amount of energy captured by plants, minus the share they metabolically use up. In other terms it is the amount of calories theoretically available to feed consumers, while the effects of climate change on marine NPP are unclear, their seems to be a general consensus that on a global scale climate change increases NPP, which all else equal, would mean greater animal biomass, greater numbers of wild animals, and more animal suffering.

fungi and mycorrhizal networks

Animals actually make up only a small share of consumer biomass, for example, six times as much biomass consists of Fungi (12 billion tons vs 2 billion tons.), as animals. In terrestrial environments. about 56% ( 12 billion tons ) of terrestrial consumer biomass is fungi, while only 2% (0.5 billion tons) is animals. Though in the ocean 40% (2 billion tons) is animals and only 6% (0.3 billion tons) is fungi. Compared to fungi and possibly bacteria biomass, It seems the rate at which animals speed up decomposition activity, seems to be less associated with cool wet climates such as tundra, boreal, and possibly temperate forest, and more with tropical or even arid ones ( please look at sources 10-11, additionally temperate, boreal and temperate forest habitats have a significantly larger bacteria/fungi eating share of soil invertebrate biomass then deserts, grasslands or tropical forests. . This suggests deforestation/savanahfication/desertification/climate change would increase the animal biomass portion of the soil. Though I wish we had more direct estimates of global soil invertebrate distribution, both in total and as a share of soil consumer biomass.

Salmons, sea birds and Nutrient Transfer.

As I have discussed before, a much larger portion of consumer biomass is animals in the ocean then on land, despite the ocean having a much smaller consumer biomass overall, it contains the majority of animal biomass, and to a lesser extent, NPP in a terrestrial ecosystem is at risk of being burned ( human induced fires alone reduce global available terrestrial NPP by 1.7%). Twice as many species of fish are anadromous (breeding and spawning in freshwater and spending the rest of lives at sea) as catadromous ( the opposite). The most iconic group of anadromous fish are 7 species of “salmon” in the family salmoniformes, anadromous trout that die after spawning. The importance of these fish to the northwestern North American terrestrial coastal area, feeding large numbers of eagles, ravens, brown bears, wolves and other animals is well known. The Kodiak Bears, the physically largest brown bear subspecies, are generally considered so large because of how plentiful the salmon are on their island. Salmon are also important keystone species in eastern Russia and Japan, and Europe and the north eastern US where the Atlantic salmon’s population is severely depleted. Salmon populations are highly threatened by threats like overfishing, pollution, diseases from farmed salmon, and damming of rivers. Salmon populations are also at high risk because salmon always return to their parent stream to breed. Salmon are an extreme example because of the way they die in mass while spawning, but in general we should expect species going to the ocean as larva, growing into adults in the ocean, and returning to freshwater to represent a transfer of usable energy from marine to freshwater/terrestrial environments. A similar well documented trend occurs with sea bird colonies, where guano( nutrients from the open ocean) build up elevates nutrient availability and biomass in the terrestrial environment and nearby coastal waterways. Even for nutrients that goes back into the sea, we should expect it to be easier to intervene in and improve shallow areas close to the ocean. These are only the most well recorded examples, what about horseshoe crabs, who come onto land to burry their eggs, that are critical for feeding migratory shorebirds? For loggerhead sea turtles, 7.6% of hatchlings don’t make it to the water, captured by terrestrial predators , and some eggs don’t hatch, , and brown hyenas regularly feed on fur seals on the Namibian coast. In general it seems animals that straddle the land and sea feed in the ocean and carry nutrients to the land, not the other way around.

Specialist vs Generalist and R vs K selection

This is I believe the most important point here, It is a very well known, almost tautological, rule in ecology that “specialists” do better in more stable environments and “generalists” do better when environments change (and the specialists they compete with are doing worse), when the environment changes, such as when habitat is fragmented, invasive species established, or the weather trends change, generalist species that can live in a larger range of conditions take advantage of the chaos. Invasive species, also tend to be generalists, as they are the ones most likely to thrive in an environment they didn’t evolve for. In the most extreme conditions specialist species are driven into extinction by environmental changes, permanently altering the biomass distribution of the landscape. Now specialists probably have better welfare then generalists. specialists, being adapted to stable environments, can put all their eggs in one basket. They invest large amounts of resources ( calories, time, attention etc.) into very few offspring, “K selected”. more generalist species living in more chaotic changing environments, produce many offspring, investing small amounts of resources in each, on the chance that at least a few will survive to adulthood “R selected”. We should expect suffering in nature to get worse as human caused environmental changes drive specialists to extinction and generalist thrive, and even after the current extinction crisis is over, it will take 10 million years for biodiversity to fully recover ( and presumably ecosystem stability and specialist frequency)

Megafauna

One form of specialization is being big. Very few animals are big. Being big requires a lot of food and a lot of time, with larger animals taking longer to become sexually mature. Specializing in being big though has advantages though, like making it easier to travel long distances, or harder for predators to eat you. Megafauna, generally defined as animals at least 45kg in terrestrial environments, are more threatened by human induced environmental changes then smaller animals. They need more space, are slower breeding, and are more prone to targeted killing either as pests. food or trophies. Exploitation of their meat and other body parts is the most common threat to mammals and fish over 100kg and amphibians and birds and other reptiles over 40 kg today. 21% of vertebrate species are threatened and 46% have decreasing populations, but 59% and 70% of megafauna do. This isn’t new though. The “prehistoric” extinctions of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, follow this pattern as well, with larger megafauna more prone to extinction, and regions of the world with longer histories of Homo species of some sort having fewer extinctions. Global wild nonhuman land mammal biomass, has declined by 70% since 1900, 80% since 10,000 years ago, and 85% since 100,000 years ago (meaning lots of room for recovery also!). Today wild land mammal biomass is to a lesser extent still dominated by megafauna, 40% being 10 species of megafauna. Meanwhile rodents only are 16% of biomass and bats 7%, being two thirds of individuals and a fifth of species, and rodents a quarter of individuals and two fifth of species. And remember that compared to most animals all these mammals are big and K-selected anyway. Animal biomass being in megafauna doesn’t just reduce suffering do to them being K-selected, but because their are simply fewer animals per unit of biomass. Paradoxically a world that looks more crowded with wild animals probably has fewer. Even with burning and fungi and bacteria, a bison is going to likely reduce the local animal population by eating food, rabbits or grasshoppers or termites or springtails might otherwise eat. This basic logic can also be applied to vultures and flies or sloths and caterpillars or any other example you can think off. The same applies in the water, likely more accurately as a much larger share of NPP goes to animals. baleen whale biomass fell by 87% do to Industrial whaling, freshwater megafauna fish populations declined 94% from 1970-2012, and reef sharks, which can be as high as half of biomass in healthy coral reefs, have declined by 60-73% from 1970 to 2020.

Sources:

Latitudinal variation in lifespan within species is explained by the metabolic theory of ecology

Effects of Temperature on Lifespan of Drosophila melanogaster from Different Genetic Backgrounds: Links between Metabolic Rate and Longevity

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/ocean/

https://ourworldindata.org/life-by-environment

The global ocean size-spectrum from bacteria to whales

National Snow and Ice Data Center

Low Fe Availability for Photosynthesis of Sea-Ice Algae: Ex situ Incubation of the Ice Diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus in Low-Fe Sea Ice Using an Ice Tan-k

Effects of climate changes on net primary productivity variation in the marsh area of the Sanjiang Plain

The biomass distribution on Earth (including supplementary material)

Global decomposition experiment shows soil animal impacts on decomposition are climate-dependent

Soil microbial diversity–biomass relationships are driven by soil carbon content across global biomes

Global distribution of soil fauna functional groups and their estimated litter consumption across biomes

Investigating Diadromy in Fishes and Its Loss in an -Omics Era

Quantifying and mapping the human appropriation of net primary production in earth's terrestrial ecosystems

Which is the largest bear species on earth? (Library of Congress)

https://www.iucnredlist.org/

https://wildsalmoncenter.org/why-protect-salmon/

State of Salmon in Watersheds

Seabird diversity and biomass enhance cross-ecosystem nutrient subsidies

Fueling of a marine-terrestrial ecosystem by a major seabird colony

The influence of seabirds on their breeding, roosting and nesting grounds: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Seabirds boost coral reef resilience

Killing of Cape fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus) pups by brown hyenas (Parahyaena brunnea) at mainland breeding colonies along the coastal Namib Desert

Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition

Nest-to-Surf Mortality of Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Caretta caretta) Hatchlings on Florida’s East Coast

Evolutionary ecology of specialization: insights from phylogenetic analysis

Responses of generalist and specialist species to fragmented landscapes

Strange invaders increase disturbance and promote generalists in an evolving food web

https://thinkwildlifefoundation.com/what-is-the-r-k-selection-theory/

Coexistence of Specialist and Generalist Species Is Shaped by Dispersal and Environmental Factors

Trends in weather conditions favor generalist over specialist species in rear-edge alpine bird communities

U.S Climate Resilience Toolkit

https://www2.nau.edu/lrm22/lessons/r_and_k_selection/r_and_k.html

Delayed biological recovery from extinctions throughout the fossil record

Of mice, mastodons and men: human-mediated extinctions on four continents

Are we eating the world's megafauna to extinction?

The global biomass of Wild Mammals (including supplementary information)

Body size downgrading of mammals over the late Quaternary

Global late Quaternary megafauna extinctions linked to humans, not climate change

https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammal-decline

The Impact of Whaling on the Ocean Carbon Cycle: Why Bigger Was Better

The global decline of freshwater megafauna

https://sharks.panda.org/conservation-focus/sharks-and-rays

Global status and conservation potential of reef sharks