Week 5: Wild Animals (Unaffected by Humans)
Wild animals, including those unaffected by humans, represent the largest group of animals by far, and likely experience the majority of total present suffering on Earth.
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Youtube Talk on Wild Animal Suffering (33 minutes)
This talk offers an excellent overview of the cause area and the reasoning for giving this issue attention, as well as examples of wild animal suffering.
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Population Makeup of the Wild (15 minutes)
This reading presents data on wild animal populations, and explains why population breakdown and sentience matter.
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Structural Factors Impacting Population Welfare (15 mins)
This post outlines some of the ecological dynamics that underpin the problem of wild animal suffering.
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Common Reasons To Not Support Work on Wild Animal Welfare (20 minutes)
This document lists 11 common misconceptions which lead individuals/stakeholders to choose not to support Wild Animal Welfare, as well as discussion on each. These may help explain why WAW is so neglected.
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Launching Screwworm-Free Future (10 minutes)
To prepare for our in-session discussion, read this post about Screwworm-Free Future, an organization supporting the eradication of the New World Screwworm in South America. The New World Screwworm causes extreme suffering to hundreds of millions of wild and domestic animals every year. Part of our discussion will revolve around what it would look like to explicitly consider the individual welfare of wild animals affected by such policies.
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Some Main Institutions Working on WAW
Wild Animal Suffering.org (10 minutes)
This site gives a quick, visual-heavy overview of wild animal suffering, including its scale.
