ABSTRACT
This chapter considers whether there’s anything morally problematic about taking a laissez-faire approach to wild animal suffering. Is it morally inconsistent, for instance, to maintain that we have a responsibility to assist suffering companion animals while taking a hands-off approach to wild animal suffering? I suggest that a broadly laissez-faire ethical approach to wild animal suffering can be defended, not so much in the sense that we must never assist wild animals but, rather, that we’re not generally required to do so, although there are nonetheless some circumstances in which we at least have moral reason to assist them.
