Animal Kingdoms: on habitat rights for wild animals

From Introduction: Many philosophers have convincingly argued that non-human animals are worthy of direct moral concern for their own sakes and, further, that they are also rights-bearers.1 Rights protect certain interests and place constraints upon what may be done to an individual in the name of producing social or personal goods.2 In the case of humans, these protections and constraints are described by an extensive set of particular rights: rights to bodily integrity, personal and political freedoms, assistance and protection, rights to certain social and economic conditions, and so forth. For animals however, theorists have only recently begun to look beyond the most basic of animal rights, such as life, liberty, and bodily security. In order to move forward, animal rights theorists need to consider what these rights entail; whether non-human animals possess a richer more extensive set of rights; and what these rights demand of moral agents, particularly in cases of non-compliance. One such right that may be possessed by animals is a right to their habitat. Besides being killed for human consumption, one of the greatest threats to non-human animals comes from the loss of their habitats. When humans threaten the habitats of wild animals, they threaten the necessary conditions3 for life and wellbeing. Determining whether and when non-human animals have rights to their habitats, and how those habitat rights are configured, are therefore important questions to consider.