Managing nature parks as an ethical challenge: a proposal for a practical tool to identify fundamental questions

Abstract

In 2010 the Report of the second International Commission on Management of the Oostvaardersplassen (OVP) was published. This international committee evaluated the management of one of the largest wetland reserves in the Netherlands. The results of this evaluation were of high public interest, because the OVP is a controversially debated topic in the Netherlands. This debate has mainly resulted from the introduction of a number of large herbivores to this area, such as Heck cattle, konik horses, and red deer, to maintain short grassland for grazing by geese. This measure had been taken as part of the initial management style of minimal intervention in the OVP, in order to allow ‘natural ecological processes to operate’ within the area. However, this non-intervention policy elicited a fierce debate on our duty of care towards these animals, when the harsh winter of 2009/2010 resulted in an unusually high winter-mortality among large herbivores. Are these animals to be considered part of nature, with animals suffering and dying by starvation as a part of natural processes? Or are they to be treated as kept animals towards which we have direct duties to prevent harm and suffering? On top of this problem, the question arises whether one should assess these dilemmas from the perspective of the individual animal or from a population-oriented perspective. Up until recently, these questions were – at the level of policy – mainly discussed as rather technical issues that demand further ecological expertise or input from veterinary and animal sciences to be solved. The ICMO2 evaluation explicitly tried to include the moral dimensions in their scientific evaluation. In this paper we present the framework that has been used in order to explicate and structure the ethical questions that play a central role in the management of the OVP. This framework offers a tool for practical ethical deliberation and aims to provide room for fundamental ethical presumptions and moral ideals.