Beyond Utility

This essay critically engages with the 2024 publication Carnivores' Contributions to People in Europe, which applies the Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) framework to assess human-carnivore interactions. While this framework provides valuable insights, it is limited by its anthropocentric orientation, reducing carnivores to either beneficial or detrimental actors based solely on their impact on human welfare. This essay advances the conversation by incorporating principles from multispecies justice and rewilding, advocating for a shift from human utility toward an ethics of ecological restitution and shared autonomy. Multispecies justice challenges hierarchical relationships between humans and other species, emphasizing the agency and inherent mattering of other-than-human beings. Rewilding, framed as ethical and ecological restitution, calls for the repair of ecosystems and acknowledgment of the historical harm inflicted on large carnivore populations. Together, these frameworks propose a radical conservation ethic that moves beyond conflict mitigation and coexistence, envisioning a future where humans and carnivores co-inhabit as equal members of a shared ecological, multispecies community.