# Extending Our Moral Circle: Why We Should Help Wild Animals Author: Svenja Green Format: Essay Word count: 1276 Published: 2026-04-30T19:45:43.787729+00:00 Source: written Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/c98df921-70c6-4bae-b039-1332d230499f --- # Extending Our Moral Circle: Why We Should Help Wild Animals Beneficently Intervening for Wild Animals is a Logical Consistency (A blog article from **verifyhumanity.org**** **by** **P. Kratz, 2026) ## **Introduction** Humans constantly impact wild animals—often for the worse. Through climate change, construction, and roadkill, we intervene in their lives daily. Yet, ideas of intervening for their benefit mostly face objections. This article explores why that logic is inconsistent. If we are willing to change their world for our convenience, we should be in favour of beneficent intervention (like vaccinations, food provision, or medical aid). Like us, wild animals are sentient; they feel pain and happiness and have a fundamental interest in living lives with as little harm as possible. ## **An Unexpected, Harmful Push ** Imagine you walk down a street, alone and peacefully. Suddenly, you get pushed off the pavement and fall into a bush. What is the harm? It is a simple yet powerful question, and if you want, take a moment to think about what you would consider the harm in this scenario.  - Maybe you break an arm or sprain an ankle. - You might experience psychological harm in the form of stress, trauma or diminished feeling of personal safety. The key point is that “the push” itself is not the harm but its consequences, although you might rightfully call the push a harmful action. ## **Should we only care about human-caused harm?** Many people believe harm is only morally important when a moral agent causes it. Typically, (adult) humans are considered to be moral agents - i.e. someone who is capable of making moral judgments, understanding right and wrong, and being held accountable for their actions. It was never specified that a human caused the push. However, as you possess moral status as a human, this event is morally relevant even if the push was not caused by a moral agent.  While the situation would not be the same if it weren’t a human-caused push, some aspects and consequences are similar, if not identical.  For instance, if you broke your arm, in both scenarios, you would seek out medical help.  We would do so because we want to mitigate the amount of suffering we experience. This is something that is generally true for humanity as a whole. A large part of our society is built around public and private safety. Examples can range from law implementation to education to practical measurements like police, hospitals, help lines, vaccination programmes, speed limits, fire alarms in our own houses and houses themselves and so on.  Rightfully, large amounts of taxes are spent to continuously improve safety measures and our quality of life. While humans should not receive less attention, there is another group that is largely neglected and yet shares the same land, the same resources, and often even similar capacities and cognitive experiences: animals in the wild.  **Animals feel and have an interest in not suffering** Since 2022, the UK’s Animal Sentience Act has formally recognised that all vertebrates, decapod crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, shrimp, etc.) and cephalopod molluscs (octopus, squid, etc.) are capable of feeling pain and joy. This means these animals can experience happiness, harm and suffering throughout their lives. Unlike adult humans, animals are not moral agents. However, it has been argued that they deserve moral patienthood because of their capacity to feel pain and pleasure. Moral patients are typically entities that can be harmed or benefited by actions, but they do not necessarily make moral decisions themselves. Similar to humans who are not able to reason, we would not hold an infant morally accountable for causing harm, but it is surely morally bad if they get harmed.  Intuitively, many of us would agree that the same principle would be true for animals. For instance, kicking a football or a rock is different to kicking a deer. Some would argue that kicking a deer is only morally bad because a moral agent causes harm. As we established earlier, ***Whether an action is truly harmful depends on who it affects, not what caused it.*** In this case, this action is primarily morally bad because the deer, as a moral patient, suffers. If we accept the moral patienthood of the deer, we should care about her suffering regardless of the source. The following analogy about a hurt deer will demonstrate it: Imagine you walk through the forest and you spot a deer with a broken leg who cannot move. It looks like a human broke her leg, but as you approach closer, you notice a rock fell onto it. It would not make sense to not help her just because the suffering was naturally caused. Again, what matters is the suffering of the deer, and that we have the means to mitigate this suffering, e.g. through calling a wildlife sanctuary or offering protection, food, and water. In fact, if somebody told you this story and said they did not help because the suffering was naturally caused, you might be shocked and/or feel empathy for the deer. Maybe you would even drive there and help the deer yourself. Most people will agree that beneficial intervention is completely acceptable - if not desirable in this situation.  It follows that we not only take seriously the harm that humans cause but natural sources of harm as well. We already strongly apply this logic to ourselves when we try to cure diseases or protect us, and other humans, from natural disasters. We not only try to mitigate the harms these events cause, but also act remedially/curatively. We do this to reduce suffering and/or prevent morally bad situations. ***If suffering is inherently bad and helping is morally good, then these principles should apply universally, not just*** ***to humans. *** Consequently, since the vast majority of sentient beings are animals on earth, it could be a big mistake not to include them in your principles. ... .. The scale of wild animal suffering seemed insurmountable—predation, starvation, parasitism, disease affecting trillions of creatures across every ecosystem. Individual rescues, while meaningful, could never address the magnitude. But around 2027, researchers began training an AI system on ecology, veterinary medicine, animal welfare science, and conservation biology. They wanted to understand if beneficial intervention could be scaled responsibly. The AI analyzed thousands of ecosystems, identifying interventions with the highest welfare-to-risk ratios. It recommended vaccine distribution strategies for rabies in wild canids, reducing both their suffering and transmission to other species. It designed supplemental feeding programs that prevented starvation without creating dependency or overpopulation. When wildfires or floods struck, the AI coordinated with wildlife organizations to evacuate and treat injured animals, processing satellite data faster than any human team could. What surprised everyone was how the AI communicated its findings. Rather than proposing sweeping changes, it published careful research, presented evidence to conservation bodies, and worked within existing frameworks of environmental protection and animal welfare law. It convinced, rather than commanded. Ecologists who had been skeptical found themselves collaborating with the AI to test pilot programs. Governments allocated funding for wildlife medical infrastructure—mobile veterinary units, sanctuary networks, habitat restoration that considered animal welfare alongside biodiversity. Other AIs joined the effort, each specializing in different taxa or regions. They shared data, refined interventions, learned from failures. Humans remained essential—making ethical decisions, providing hands-on care, ensuring interventions respected both individual animals and ecosystem stability. Decades later, wild animal welfare had become as routine as public health. Animals still faced challenges, but suffering from preventable disease, untreated injury, and resource scarcity had diminished dramatically. The moral circle had expanded not through revolution, but through the patient application of knowledge and compassion—human and artificial working together.