Deep Uncertainty, Public Reason, the Conservation of Biodiversity and the Regulation of Markets for Lion Skeletons

Abstract

Public reason is a formal concept in political theory. There is a need to better understand how public reason might be elicited in making public decisions that involve deep uncertainty, which arises from pernicious and gross ignorance about how a system works, the boundaries of a system, and the relative value (or disvalue) of various possible outcomes. This article is the third in a series to demonstrate how ethical argument analysis-a qualitative decision-making aid-may be used to elicit public reason in the presence of deep uncertainty. The first article demonstrated how argument analysis is capable of probing deep into a single argument. The second article demonstrated how argument analysis can analyze a broad set of arguments and how argument analysis can be operationalized for use as a decision-making aid. This article demonstrates (i) the relevance of argument analysis to public reasoning, (ii) the relevance of argument analysis for decision-making under deep uncertainty, an emerging direction in decision theory, and (iii) how deep uncertainty can arise when the boundary between facts and values is inescapably entangled. This article and the previous two make these demonstrations using, as an example, the conservation and sustainable use of lions.

The unregulated nature of the commercial captive predator industry in South Africa: Insights gained using the PAIA process

“…This shift was most likely the inadvertent result of international conservation measures to protect tigers (Panthera tigris) that led to the reduced availability of tiger bones and the subsequent substitution with lion bones (Williams et al 2015). At the same time, a significant number of nonconsumptive, tourism-based activities evolved, such as interactive tourism and voluntourism experiences for paying tourists (Schroeder 2018;Coals et al 2019), creating a multi-sectoral commodity chain for lions (Green et al 2021) that contributes an estimated ZAR500 million (US$42 million) annually to South Africa's economy (van der Merwe et al 2017). It is important to note, however, that these figures have been disputed (e.g., Harvey 2020) as they do not take into account the quantifiable opportunity costs associated with the continuation of the industry.…”

Monitoring compliance of CITES lion bone exports from South Africa

“…Note: unless specified otherwise, all port weights are for packaged skeletons. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249306.g005 PLOS ONE (A n ) was 7.5 (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11), the overall observed heterozygosity (H O ) was 0.619 and mean expected heterozygosity (H E ) was 0.701, with the probability of identity across 18 markers at 1.38 −12 and PIC values ranging from 0.189 to 0.797 (S3 Table ). The genotype accumulation curve plateaued at five loci, indicating sufficient discriminatory power for individualization of the lion bone samples.…”

“…Detractors argue that it is unethical and detrimental to threatened species while, conversely, advocates maintain that trade bans are ineffective and have, in the case of some species, increased incentives for illegal exploitation thereby failing to stem the decline of targeted wild populations [1]. The legal sale of African lion (Panthera leo) bones and body parts is at the centre of one such debate [2][3][4][5] and encompasses not only conservation concerns, but also animal welfare, stakeholder livelihoods, and international politics [5,6].…”

Contemporary Cultural Trade of Lion Body Parts

“…In addition to these wild and ‘managed-wild’ lion populations, South Africa has substantial numbers of captive-bred lions [ 27 ]. This controversial practice of lion ‘farming’ and associated industries of captive-bred or ‘canned’ trophy hunting linked to intercontinental lion bone trade throughout Southeast Asia have brought issues of lion trade to the fore in both conservation and public discourse [ 28 ]. Considerable debate has focused on South African lion farming, particularly on how supplies of captive-bred lion products may influence trade dynamics and impact the few remaining wild lion populations [ 3 , 5 , 7 , 28 ].…”