This document discusses the intrinsic and instrumental value of conserving tigers. It outlines a study that aims to determine the moral and ethical reasons conservation professionals cite for saving tigers, and whether these reasons are linked to affective responses. The study will use interviews and thought experiments to examine perspectives from different views in the conservation field. It will also take a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from fields like affective neuroscience and bioethics to better understand values in conservation. The document does not present any conclusions as no data has been collected yet.

1. Why Save the Tiger?
They Scratch
Investigating morality, ethics and affect in relation to
conservation
ALA Plowden-Wardlaw
February 2014

2. Background
• Rastogi, A., et al. (2013). Diverging
viewpoints on tiger conservation: A Q-method
study and survey of conservation
professionals in India. Biological
Conservation, 161(0), 182-192.
• Tigers as a lens for the enquiry into
instrumental v intrinsic value of
biodiversity

3. Practical Problem
• Instrumental arguments for conservation
are important
– Watersheds
– Carbon sinks
– Genetic resilience
– Possible medical applications
– Erosion resistance
– Food stuff bank
– Recreation

4. But not very helpful to tigers
Unless you are a
• tiger poacher
• tiger farmer
• reserve hotelier/eco lodge owner or
associate livelihood
• conservationist
Deriving direct income from tigers

5. For most people
• Tigers are dangerous – cf “Tiger widows”
• Livestock/game predation
• Substantial range – hence great resource users
with high degree of potential for human wildlife
conflict (HWC) (Inskip, 2013)

6. Intrinsic value and affect
Plurality of terms
• “biophilia” coined by Wilson in 1984 and
discussed by numerous commentators
including Simaika and Samways (2010),
• “land ethic” (O’Neal, et al.,1995).,
• “conservation ethic” (Sagoff, 2007)
A cognitive “mask” for a similarity of affect in
relation to a practical resource use
problem?

7. For conservationists
• A charismatic, totemic species
• Supposedly a flagship/umbrella species
for fundraising – however species
continues to decline, only $34million spent
1998-2003 (Christie, 2006) and
$35million/year needed (Walston et al,
2010)

8. Concensus on moral/ethical
reasons?
• Rastogi (op cit) found nearly 90% of his respondents
agreed that there were “moral/ethical” reasons for saving
tigers, and suggests using this to build concensus on
otherwise divergent views as to strategy in a complex
debate often in the tiger conservation world
characterised as “tribal v tiger”, pitting human use
against exclusionary conservation
• “Our results suggest that conservation professionals,
irrespective of their position in the tiger–tribal debate, are
likely to agree on the moral/ethical grounds for tiger
conservation.”
• This study takes this finding as a launchpad to
investigate broader issues of morals, ethics and affect in
conservation

9. What do we want to find out?
• Using the Tiger as an example, to determine to what
degree respondents from the conservation community
consider their conservation efforts to be based on
moral/ethical principles (or others).
• To understand what such principles are in detail, and if
they are the same as what is commonly described as
the “intrinsic value” of biodiversity.
• To understand if there is an affective component to
respondents’ conservation activities, and what the
specific nature of this component is.
• To locate the results within a wider interdisciplinary
literature.

10. Research Questions
• For what principal reasons (if any) do the
respondents consider saving the tiger
desirable?
• To what degree are their reasons morally or
ethically motivated?
• When engaging with the question, do they
experience affective responses? If so, what
are they?
• What lessons, if any, can be drawn from the
resulting data, and is this approach worthy of
further investigation and wider application?

11. How do we address the questions?
• Unstructured interviews leading to semi-structured
interviews, literature review.
• Sampling by approaching a range of
conservationists of different views and
seniorities through the DICE and other
networks
• Thought/choice experiments

12. Introduction to hypotheticals
• Hypotheticals
• Physical sciences (Galileo and rate of
falling objects) (Galileo, 1672)
• Jurisprudence (Rawls and the “veil of
ignorance) (Rawls, 1971)

13. Conservation hypothetical
• An example of a hypothetical used to examine
the proposition that
“The intrinsic value of biodiversity is a useless
concept?”
might be to ask if the respondent “would be
content to sacrifice the bulk of biodiversity if the
instrumental value of wealth creation and human
happiness could be demonstrably maximised by
minimising biodiversity?”

14. Multidisciplinary approach
• Affective neuroscience
Choosing a model of emotions based on affective
neuroscience research rather than simple self
reporting grounds the analysis in objective data.
Prior to surveying the literature more fully,
inclined to utilise Panksepp’s taxonomy
SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE,
PANIC/GRIEF and PLAY to parse idiosyncratic
responses and varied vocabularies of affect
(Panksepp, J., 2011)

15. Multidisciplinary approach (2)
• Bioethics
One of the core issues in dealing with values and conservation is that
of moral considerability.
Are we concerned about humans alone – a traditional ethical position –
or should conservationists worry about the individual organism,
taxon, ecosystem – or what?
There is a developing body of work concerned with ethics as applied to
situations found in nascent genetic engineering – eg the ethics of
mixing human and non-human DNA
Sometimes called the “chimera” issue, species boundaries are a key
consideration of ethical concern (Robert & Baylis, 2003). As in
biology, the fluidity of species boundary raises issues with practical
impact as to decisions taken, and qualitative input is unavoidable in
the decision process.
Is there anything to be learnt from, or contributed to, this literature?

16. Conclusions
No data – so can’t conclude. However,
conceivable conclusions might be:
• Conservation – good on the how, bad on the
why?
• Instrumental approach will always lose to non-conservation
instrumentality
• Direct approach to perceived “embarassment”
when dealing with intrinsic value issues
• Adaptive value of affect in relation to resource
use decisions

17. References
Robert, J. S., & Baylis, F. (2003). Crossing species boundaries. The American Journal of Bioethics,
3(3), 1–13.
Christie S. 2006. NGO investment in tiger conservation units, 1998–2003. In Sanderson E, et al.,
editors. Setting Priorities for the Conservation and Recovery of Wild Tigers: 2005–2015. The
Technical Assessment. Washington (DC): WCS, WWF, Smithsonian, and NFWF-STF. p. 116-
119.
Galileo, G (1628). Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche. Translated from the Italian and Latin into
English by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio. New York: Macmillan, 1914. Accessed online 20th
February 2014 at http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php
%3Ftitle=753&layout=html
O’Neal, A. E., Pandian, A.S., Rhodes-Conway, S.V. and Bornbusch, A.H. (1995). Human Economies,
the Land Ethic, and Sustainable Conservation. Conservation Biology, 9(1).
Panksepp, J. (2011). Cross-Species Affective Neuroscience Decoding of the Primal Affective
Experiences of Humans and Related Animals. Plos One, 6(9), e21236.
Rastogi, A., et al. (2013). Diverging viewpoints on tiger conservation: A Q-method study and survey of
conservation professionals in India. Biological Conservation, 161(0), 182-192.
Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Sagoff, M. (2007). On the compatibility of a conservation ethic with biological science. Conservation
Biology, 21(2).
Simaika, J. P. and Samways, M. J. (2010). Biophilia as a Universal Ethic for Conserving Biodiversity.
Conservation Biology, 24(3).
Walston J., Karanth K.U., and Stokes E.J.. (2010). Avoiding the Unthinkable: What Will it Cost to
Prevent Tigers Becoming Extinct in the Wild? Wildlife Conservation Society, New York.
Wilson, Edward O. (1984). Biophilia.Cambridge; Harvard University Press