The Moral Case for Saving Species
— Defenders of Wildlife 1998

"The Moral Case for Saving Species," Defenders: The Conservation Magazine of Defenders of Wildlife 73 (no. 3, Summer 1998):6-15. Thirteen philosophers explain why society should give high priority to the Endangered Species Act. Rolston essay on page 10. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/70410

Thirteen philosophers explain why society should give high priority to the Endangered Species Act. Several billion years worth of creative toil, several million species of teeming life, have been handed over to the care of this late coming species in which mind has flowered and morals have emerged. Only the human species contains moral agents, but perhaps conscience ought not be used to exempt every other form of life from consideration, with the resulting paradox that the sole moral species acts only in its collective self interest toward all the rest.