I've been attending today's Animal Liberation March in Poland's capital, Warsaw. From what I heard there were never so many people, so a record was set, and it really looked to be so! Animal Liberation March is the biggest vegan march in Poland, and I feel so happy I could take part in it for another year. Seeing all those people caring about animal suffering is great and makes me feel hopeful. As usually, I try to spread awareness about Wild Animal Suffering on such events, because many vegans are not familiar with the concept and the importance of it. I share my sign from the march. Let's hope the promoting ethics and empathy will eventually make place for a constructive discussion about the problem of wild animal suffering and the position of it in a coherent moral ideology. Thank You all the people who alk about it, read about it, and think about it, as You are at the forefront of the future.

Biodiversitätsinitiative dilemma

Hello

I'm facing a bit of a dilemma & would love to hear your opinion on this. Faced with the alarming decline of animal species, plants & ecosystems, I have always voted green & supported initiatives to increase biodiversity. Recently, however, I've been reflecting on my values & realised that I don't see intrinsic value in nature itself. Instead, I value the well-being of sentient creatures within it. So of course we're all heavily reliant on nature.

This brings me to the upcoming biodiversity initiative. Whilst it aims to protect & enhance biodiversity, I'm actually & seriously concerned about the potential increase in animal suffering. According to the concepts of r- and k-selection in ecology, species can be categorised based on their reproductive strategies:

R-selected species produce many offspring with little parental care, resulting in high mortality rates & often harsh living conditions.

K-selected species have fewer offspring but invest more in their care, resulting in a higher survival rate.

In nature, many animals, especially R-selected species, suffer significant suffering due to predation, disease & starvation. Negative utilitarians, who focus on reducing suffering, argue that in the natural world there is often more suffering than well-being or happiness. There are more R-selective species.

In view of this perspective, I'm torn. On the one hand, I would like to support biodiversity & the protection of natural habitats. On the other hand, I'm worried that increasing biodiversity could inadvertently lead to more animal suffering.

I'm aware that I've an extremely controversial stance here (especially as a vegan). I would therefore like to have these concerns challenged.

Parasitism is an unmitigated evil-an evil that cuts two ways. It results in the degeneracy of the parasite; and in the host species it causes immense destruction while contributing little or nothing to the evolutionary development of that species-perhaps even causing retrogression if the parasitism is heavy. 

Among plants, I am familiar with no important structural modifications that might with confidence be attributed to the selective influence of parasites.

Among animals, parasites appear to have had strangely little effect in modifying either structure or habits.

We may lament the tremendous loss of life, even up to the extermination of whole species, brought about by the competition between individual and individual in a crowded world, and by the habit of one living thing preying upon another. But at least this competition and this predation have been fruitful in the progressive development of organisms in myriad diverse ways. Parasitism has taken its tremendous toll of life with scarcely any return that we can see; it has led to retrogression rather than to progress. Hence, we may call it the greatest evil of life.

The parasites among men are those who exist through the efforts of other men, producing nothing themselves. They include the idle rich who live in sloth on inherited fortunes, the shiftless poor who live on charity or such windfalls as they can find, the thief, the swindler, the forger, the smuggler, and the panderer to the vices and follies of men. 

Among men, as among all other organ- isms, parasitism is the absolute and unmixed evil-the evil that cuts two ways. For the parasite it results in moral and often, too, in intellectual and physical degeneration; for the hosts-the rest of society-it causes tremendous losses with no compensating gains.

We got a young cat because my wife really wanted another one & always had at least one. I'm now thinking about how we can make sure that we avoid any additional suffering caused by keeping this cat. He has an enormous urge to go outside (which we currently only do with a lead). She occasionally tries to snap at insects. We currently play with her often & regularly. I have heard that a small bell could warn birds early enough sometimes. Does anyone have any recommended reading and/or tips & tricks?

Also what's best to feed her?

I've been thinking that since some plants attract more insects and therefore need more pesticides to grow (like berries, or thin skin sweet fruits) and others almost don't need any (like avocados or pulses, I think), as a vegan, I could try to eat more of the second so as to support as little as I can the massive killing of insects.

But I have little info on which plants need less or more pesticide use per calorie.

I only have this info:

https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php Dirty dozen (foods with more pesticides in them when you buy them)

https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/clean-fifteen.php Clean fifteen (the opposite)

Some useful data on % of acres treated with insecticides depeding on the crop type: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Chemical_Use/

Brian Tomasiks article, which has an attempt at ranking foods depedning on wild animal suffering, I don't agree with his approach in ethics, but it's something https://reducing-suffering.org/crop-cultivation-and-wild-animals/

The only argument I can think of is that we need to factor in wild animal happiness too.

https://news.mongabay.com/2024/06/know-your-salamander-to-conserve-amphibians-study-their-intelligence-commentary/

https://faunalytics.org/what-is-wild-animal-welfare-physiology/

https://www.wildanimalinitiative.org/blog/cicada-emergence-2024