Corinne Persinger

Hybridization and genetic admixture between species have long generated controversy in conservation biology. While some conservationists regard hybridization as a major threat to biodiversity, recent genomic research suggests that gene flow between species is widespread in evolutionary history and may enhance adaptive capacity in rapidly changing environments. Despite this growing recognition, conservation policy—particularly under the U.S. Endangered Species Act—remains ambiguous regarding the status and management of admixed populations. This paper examines whether conservationists have general reasons to prevent hybridization and admixture. I argue that there is no prima facie justification for a blanket commitment to preventing interspecies genetic mixing. After introducing the stakes of this issue through the historical Red Wolf Recovery Program, I analyze two prominent arguments commonly invoked to justify anti-hybridization positions: appeals to genetic purity and concerns about ‘extinction through introgression.’ I argue that genetic purity lacks intrinsic conservation value and that worries about introgressive extinction are often overstated and misapply arguments for the intrinsic value of species. Furthermore, efforts to prevent hybridization can undermine other conservation goals, including maintaining genetic diversity and ecological connectivity. In place of general prohibitions, I defend a contextual approach to hybridization, according to which the value or harm of admixture must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, considering its ecological, evolutionary, and cultural consequences.

At the turn of the twentieth century American bison (Bison bison) hybridization with cattle (Bos taurus) was considered a major threat to the continued existence of the species. The goal of conserving specifically “pure-blooded bison,” a qualification first iterated by William Hornaday in 1887, continues to be salient in conservation practice even today. This paper argues that this conception of bison ‘purity’ was likely forged in the context of eugenics and white supremacist thought. It is argued that the legitimacy of conservation management practices that seek to preserve ‘purity’ in a given population should be shown through analyses of the actual benefits of such a practice for the population (such as maintenance of locally adaptive traits) rather than reliance on intuitions that purity is simply valuable for its own sake. This paper concludes that, in the case of bison, there are no benefits that demonstrate the value of purity as a conservation priority.

In this paper, it is argued that animal rights theorists commit willful hermeneutical ignorance (WHI), a form of epistemic injustice, when they fail to engage with Indigenous hunting practices as components of robust and nuanced philosophical traditions. In doing so, they obscure the nature of their disagreement with Indigenous theories over the ethicality of hunting. There is a fundamentally different understanding of taking life at the heart of the disagreement between animal rights and certain Indigenous theories. These different conceptions are essential to these theories’ moral evaluations of hunting and are supported by distinct conceptual frameworks. Yet inter-framework disagreement is exactly the kind of thing rendered invisible to those who perpetrate WHI—as they uncritically privilege their own conceptual framings. Ultimately, it is concluded that responsible cross-cultural philosophical dialogue must engage with this disagreement at the framework-level.