Summary of Lecture 3: The essence of wildlife law

Wildlife law/crime is a way of giving the environment a legal standing within our anthropocentric world. Imagine a legal tool that named and shamed all the individuals in the world who are commiting attrocities against the environment on a daily basis.... wildlife law may in the future provide a legal framework to prevent such environmental crimes from continuing.
However, as a starting point we need to decide a universally acceptable standing in order to ascertain what can be classed as a wildlife crime........

How do we agree on environmental ethics when our core values and beliefs differ from culture to culture?

Individual core values are extremely subjective and unshakeable, which arguably are heavily influenced according to our social status and religious beliefs....we are often a product of the environment in which we grew up in. This may lead to a certain degree of prejudice.

1) Anthropocentrism states that humans are the centre of all things and only humans have moral standing.
2) Biocentrism values all living things and it is therefor wrong to kill any living thing.
3) Ecocentrism, also referred to as "deep ecology", holds the belief that ecosytems have moral values.