Misunderstandings of science and ethics in the moral panic over cats: reply to Crespin et al. 2020

Just preservation, trusteeship and multispecies justice

“…We share Wienhues's concern about overstretching the concept of justice, but we do not think we do so in including justice to communities, since we do so for human communities as well, as in the many historical and current movements for civil rights and justice for marginalized groups. We are currently addressing this in other work that strives to promote both compassion and justice towards individuals and communities (Santiago-Ávila et al, 2018;Lynn et al, 2019Lynn et al, , 2020. In this and further work, we emphasize the appropriate consideration of nonhumans.…”

Outdoor Cats: An Introduction

“…In the final article, "Outdoor Cats: Science, Ethics and Politics," the editors William S. Lynn (Clark University; PAN Works) and Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila (Project Coyote and The Rewilding Institute; PAN Works) examine the ethics and politics of outdoor cats. Two of our prior publications established some of the fallacious reasoning and evidentiary weakness of claims that cats are a universal threat to biodiversity and public health (Lynn et al, 2019;Lynn et al, 2020). A key finding of these articles was that the ethical dimensions and policy implications are under-studied.…”