Duties to endangered species (Encyclopedia of Environmental Biology)

Abstract

Whether humans have duties to endangered species is a significant theoretical and an urgent practical question. Few doubt that we have some obligations concerning species. But these might be all obligations to persons benefitted or harmed by species as resources. Is there a human duty directly to species, additionally to obligations that humans have to fellow members of their own species? An answer is vital to the question of the conservation of biodiversity, how humans can achieve a sustainable relationship to the natural world.