We have expanded our work on the situation of animals in the wild

18 Dec 2019

We are happy to announce that we have updated the situation of animals in the wild section on our website. This is not a minor update; the articles are greatly expanded and improved, and many new scientific references have been added to them.

We’ve added much more detail, as well as many new considerations and ideas. As we recently announced, as part of this section, we greatly expanded our coverage of the topic of antagonism in nature.

You can read our full section on the situation of animals in the wild here:

Each of these nine pages includes information about certain ways in which animals can be harmed in the wild. They are meant to present an introduction to this issue in light of the available evidence.

We believe this is important because many people still hold an idyllic view of nature. According to this view, animals live in a sort of natural paradise where suffering is irrelevant. Other people are aware that animals can suffer a lot in the wild, but believe that, overall, animals are happy with their situation.

This idyllic view of nature causes people to believe that animals don’t need our help; they just need to be left alone. This has important consequences, because it stops people from considering ways of helping animals living in the wild. However, a sober look at the facts should lead us to reject this view.

The sources of harm for wild animals can take many forms, such as those listed above. Many of us take for granted things that these animals will never naturally have. Animals suffer and die every day because they don’t have their basic needs for food, water, and shelter met. Others suffer and die due to other factors, including among others disease, accidents, fights, and parasitism.

This situation is not something exceptional. In fact, many animals will die shortly after coming to existence. Most animals have a huge number of offspring, but, roughly speaking, on average only one per parent survives for long enough to reproduce. The few surviving ones may still live hard lives filled with many dangers.

Understanding the situation of animals in the wild can help to inform us of the different ways in which we can help them. Finding out the greatest causes of suffering in different groups of animals can suggest ways in which we can most effectively help them.

Many people fail to consider the importance of the wellbeing of individual animals. These articles are intended to help to inform people about the much neglected topic of how individual animals suffer in natural conditions. We hope that this new content will inspire and enable activists and researchers to work to improve the situation of animals in living in the wild.

This update is part of a larger effort to update our whole website section about wild animal suffering. Please consider supporting our work to help improve the lives of animals everywhere.