Are Humans Worth More Than Other Organisms?

Draft script:

From The Conversation on 12 February 2024 comes this headline: 'Fascinating and troubling': Australians would rather save a single human life than prevent an entire species from becoming extinct. The article was written by three Professors at Charles Darwin University in Australia. It begins with these four paragraphs:

“Australia is in the grip of an escalating extinction crisis. Since colonisation, 100 native plant and animal species have become formally listed as extinct due to human activities. The actual number is undoubtedly far higher.

Surveys suggest Australians want to prevent extinctions, regardless of the financial cost. But when it comes to the crunch, how much do we really care?

In emergency situations, there is a long-held convention that official responders such as firefighters first attempt to save human life, then property and infrastructure, then natural assets.

Our research published today investigated whether this convention reflects community values. We found the people we surveyed valued one human life more than the extinction of an entire non-human species – a result both fascinating and troubling.”

The “research published today” includes a link to a peer-reviewed paper in Conservation Biology. The peer-reviewed, open-access paper was published 19 December 2023. It was written by the same three scholars who published the article at The Conversation. It is titled Social valuation of biodiversity relative to other types of assets at risk in wildfire. The Abstract includes this information:

“Environmental crises, such as wildfires, can cause major losses of human life, infrastructure, biodiversity, and cultural values. In many such situations, incident controllers must make fateful choices about what to protect—and hence what to abandon. With an online representative survey of >2000 adult Australians, we investigated social attitudes to this dilemma. ... Survey respondents overwhelmingly prioritized a single human life …, even if that choice resulted in extinction of other species. Inanimate … objects were accorded lowest priority. Among biodiversity assets, respondents prioritized protecting a population of the iconic koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) ahead of preventing the extinction of a snail … and a plant species ... These results variably support current policy in that they emphasize the importance the community places on protection of human life, but results diverged from conventional practice in rating some biodiversity assets ahead of infrastructure. The preference for protecting a population of koalas ahead of action taken to prevent the extinction of an invertebrate and plant species corroborates previous research reporting biases in the way people value nature. If noncharismatic species are not to be treated as expendable, then the case for preventing their extinction needs to be better made to the community. Given the increasing global incidence of high-severity wildfires, further sampling of societal preferences among diverse asset types is needed to inform planning, policy, and practice relating to wildfire. Other preemptive targeted management actions (such as translocations) are needed to conserve biodiversity, especially noniconic species, likely to be imperiled by catastrophic events.”

The peer-reviewed paper uses a best-worst scale to assess the preferences of survey respondents. The results are striking. Again, the more than 2,000 respondents overwhelmingly prioritized a single human life, even if doing so resulted in the extinction of a non-human species. Not surprisingly, the charismatic koala scored much higher than a snail or a plant. In fact, the list of assets ranked by survey respondents was prioritized as follows: (1) a person not warned to evacuate, (2) a person who ignored advice to evacuate, (3) a population of 50 koalas, of which many other populations exist elsewhere, (4) one of only two population of a wallaby species, (5) the only population of a native species of snail, which would become extinct if burned, (6) the only population of a native species of shrub, which would become extinct if burned, (7) a flock of 50 sheep, (8) a house, shed, and tractor, and (9) two items of cultural significance to Indigenous people, including a rock art gallery and a tree carving.

According to the article in The Conversation, “[s]urvey respondents overwhelmingly gave the highest ranking to the two options involving saving a human life – even if that person had been told repeatedly to evacuate and even if, as a consequence, a snail or shrub species became extinct.” The best-worst scores ranked from a score of +6,647 for a person not warned to evacuate to -4,655 for a shed. Stunningly, the best-worst score was -226 for the extinction of a plant species and -329 for the extinction of a snail.

A few paragraphs into a subsection of The Conversation article titled Making the hard choices, we find the take-home message: “Survey respondents overwhelmingly gave the highest ranking to the two options involving saving a human life – even if that person had been repeatedly told to evacuate and even if, as a consequence, a snail or shrub species became extinct.” In other words, survey respondents overwhelmingly prioritized saving a human life. This was the case even if that person had been repeatedly told to evacuate and even if, as a consequence, a snail or shrub species became extinct. In fact, only four options had positive best-worse scores. In order, these were saving a person who had not received evacuation warnings, saving a person who ignored evacuation warnings, saving the charismatic koala population, and saving the wallaby population. Every other option had a negative score, indicating that survey respondents were more likely to assign them a score of “least important” as opposed to “most important.”

I suspect respondents from other countries would make choices similar to those of the Australians. We grew up in a culture that prioritizes human life over the lives of non-human species, along with this culture over all other cultures. I am not surprised a flock of 50 sheep scored relatively low. I am surprised that two items of cultural significance to Indigenous people ranked last on the list of nine items. Rating two items of importance to Indigenous people—a gallery of rock art and a tree carving—lower than a flock of sheep, and also lower than a house, shed, and tractor, is appalling. It’s simultaneously appalling and not surprising, in a culture that prioritizes Caucasian males over … well, everything.