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I’ve pondered many different iterations of the question in the title of this interview countless times and I’m sure I’m not alone.1 A month ago, I learned about the very important work of Dr. Jacqui Wilmshurst, who had been a speaker at the Annual Oxford Animal Ethics Summer School, and I deeply wanted to know more about her views on this incredibly difficult, disturbing, and nuanced question. I’m thrilled she could take the time to discuss its many sides using her enormous amount of on-the-ground experience with many different animals through the lens of disability.2.
Marc Bekoff: Why did you get involved in rescuing wild animals, and how does your work relate to your background and general areas of interest?
Jacqui Wilmshurst: I’d wanted to work in wildlife rescue for as long as I can remember. As a child, my mum was the person in our neighbourhood who everyone brought orphaned or injured garden birds and small mammals to. I found it so rewarding to witness them recover, and I felt proud to play a small part in it. I also felt a profound sense of privilege and wonder in being in close proximity and relationship with them, even just for a short while. I was enchanted by them. I have always had a ‘soft spot’ for the misunderstood and the maligned. I hated learning how grey squirrels and corvids were losing their lives for reasons that did not feel to me to be right, just, or necessary. Being able to give some of them a different future and contributing to change through both research and practice is what motivates me.
MB: What are some of the ethical and other questions that arise in your important work?
JW: The most central ethical question, and challenge, that arises out of this work is this: Is giving these animals a life of permanent sanctuary and care in captivity a fate worse than death?
It’s a question with many nuances. Yet I have found that the thinking and perspectives that dominate the field, especially in the formal regulations, guidelines, and training in wildlife rehabilitation, are very ‘black and white’ (like the magpies in my community). They are based on generic, rule-based principles and formulaic processes. I choose to see the personal, the individual, the situational, and the relational. I like to get into the grey (like the squirrels) and seek out the rich learning between the extremes.
For example, my experience shows me that between wild and domesticated is the ability for a wild-born, wild animal to adapt to a relationship with a human in a domestic setting while retaining their wild instincts and their wild needs.
Between able and disabled is their capacity to use their bodies as they are, rather than as a ‘normal’ member of their species would, through their own incredible resilience and capacity to adapt, and in relationship with the support that I am able to offer them in my care. They must, of course, be able to have quality of life, but in my experience, that is possible far more often than many would assume. Between independent and dependent is the interdependence that emerges from our interspecies relationships, in which both parties gain and learn from the caregiving and from the friendship and bond. We have much to learn from indigenous perspectives on kinship in contrast to our cultural narratives favoring superiority and control.
When people ask me why I chose to help grey squirrels, in relation to the conservation challenges posed by invasive species, my response is “I choose to hate the problem, not the squirrels”. Squirrels in Britain have experienced a drastic reversal of fortune over the years. Back in the late 1800s, grey squirrels were intentionally introduced as highly desirable ornamental and exotic pets, prized for the way they look. At the same time, reds were actively hunted as ‘tree devils’, with bounties offered on their tails. Now, grey squirrels are aggressively culled and have been switched from ‘pets’ to ‘pests’, while red squirrels have been elevated to an iconic species and frequent “poster child” for conservation efforts. This serves to illustrate how much our relationships with wild animals are at the mercy of human whims and fluctuating perspectives—especially on value.
MB: How does your work differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?
JW: As well as opting to care for members of species that are often unpopular, or at least not considered valuable or desirable—whether in conservation terms or more generally in the culture—I have chosen to care specifically for disabled individuals. My work is often not seen as a ‘worthy cause’ and can attract anger and judgment.
I have peers in my network, and an incredible mentor, who share my values and also take care of these species and of disabled animals, but the official guidance and ‘accepted wisdom’ is that these animals would be better off dead. We care for them because it is enough for us that they just are, and that they value their own individual lives, regardless of wider opinion or cultural narratives about them.
The greatest difference is that I am now bringing academic research into my practice, in the form of multispecies autoethnography. This means that I’m using my personal, unapologetically subjective, lived experience of my caring relationships with these animals as data to explore, analyze, and address ethical questions. I hope that I can make a useful contribution to knowledge in animal ethics and in environmental ethics. My research also puts me in contact with thought leaders and with progressive fields of research that help to broaden and challenge my perspectives, and improve my practice—for example, philosophical ethology, care ethics, compassionate conservation, and indigenous ways of knowing, relating, and belonging
MB: Are you hopeful that, as people learn more about what’s involved in rescuing wild animals, they will come to more fully understand the important questions that you and your coworkers face each and every day?
JW: I hope that as people learn more, they will be open to having deeply held assumptions and beliefs about these animals—about their inherent worth, their individuality, and their capabilities—challenged and changed. We need to be adaptable enough to know how adaptable they are, to ask better questions, and to be open to learning from them, as well as about them. Also to learn about ourselves as animals—our wellbeing, our own wild souls, and how we can better belong in our multispecies communities.
