AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Animal ethics is increasingly arguing that moral obligations exist to intervene into ecology to reduce wild animal suffering; this requires control over animal reproduction. This raises serious population ethics concerns that have been ignored by animal ethics. Practical human population ethics has confined itself to comparing reproductive choices that involve a human agent creating one or zero individuals. Because human agents attract reproductive autonomy, obligations to create more or less individuals than would be freely chosen are not considered. However, animal ethics is not constrained by animal autonomy, or values given to biodiversity, species membership and ecological roles as animal ethics has converged to reject their import. Sustainability is also dismissed as ultimately constraining our relationship to animals and ecology; technological innovation is always possible. The interspecies population ethics avaliable suggests repugnant conclusions are avoided by a hierarchy of moral standing; no matter how big the animal population, a human population remains preferable. I show that animal ethics has harboured implicit support for such a hierarchy from Mill to Regan. I conclude that animal ethics forced to confront population ethics either degrades into a weak anti-cruelty framework or supports eugenics that phases out all non-human animal life.