Hunting and the Fontanelle Forest:

To set the stage for evaluation on whether the Fontanelle Forest Association’s rules are

coherently moral or better amended, I will first reflect on the two distinct approaches offered to

us.

To begin, moral frameworks that only prioritize animal rights and welfare could quite

possibly condemn controlled-hunting due to its inherent violations of animals’ intrinsic rights

and value. After all, hunting in most all practiced forms consists of both inflicting pain upon an

animal, thus being incompatible for a capacity-for-pain framework like Singer’s, as while as

ending the life and will of the subject, thus drawing ire from a possession-of-life frameworks like

Regan’s.

On the opposite end though, holistic environmental approaches like those put forth by

Aldo Leopold can be used to argue for controlled hunting. This is largely due to two factors. The

first is that said-holistic approach both expands its moral circle slightly larger than Singer’s and

Regan’s as it assigns worth to the overall “environment” and living organisms that would be

excluded (like many plants for example), while also assigning less capacity for variance between

things in that moral circle. The second distinction that is drawn to sometimes accommodate

hunting though is that this holistic approach is guided most largely by a collective utilitarianism,

thus much more easily able to accommodate the overriding of an individual’s rights for the sake

of a collective.

Gary Varner in his writings attempts to demonstrate that through the Miniride principal,

even rights-based animal welfare frameworks like Regan’s can be shown to tolerate controlled

hunting. He did this by saying that as the various animals in a forest are creatures with
comparable capacities for life, the use of controlled hunting against the few is preferable to

prevent the mass deaths of various animals due to it reducing the lives and rights of less animals.

Amidst all the approaches above, there are various issues and limitations that can be

pointed out. On the side of Regan and Singer, it is notable that the specific moral circles they

assigned are not large enough to sustain the livelihoods of those same species. That is to say, that

by simply prioritizing the rights of mammals for example, it allows for those sake mammals to

perish due to the lack of protections for the plants they eat. Elsewhere, the primary concern I

noticed in holistic approaches is that it seems to lack some foundation in that it allows for the

preservation of a collection or environment, but considers individuals disposable to its sum.

My views on hunting to compare with all the above are that I don’t support the practice in

a general sense as I do feel largely like Regan in that animals have individual lives with

individual worth, but I can see hunting’s necessity in practice as we are currently limited by

resource-scarcity in our world.

In regard to the original question of “should the rules be altered”, I would contend that

the rules themselves are usually fine and should in fact be followed by all visitors, but that they

do require some asterisk for alternative behavior by management. While I do believe that we

should advocate great concern for these deer and that options like relocation, rehousing, and

terrain management could all be better utilized to address issues like the ones described in the

article, my current understanding of resources available to conservationists is such that I doubt

this is possible for all of them. Ultimately, I think a solution to this could also consist of simply

ensuring that we as a global society continue to develop greater understanding of the moral

responsibilities we owe to all these climates endangered by our expansionism and what we need
to do to combat it, but I do believe in harm mitigation for potential suffering while such

infrastructure is established.