Over the weekend, I went kayaking in a lake.

I was paddling past a tiny island in the middle of the lake when I spotted a wild duck that was caught in some fishing line. It was extremely agitated, and tried repeatedly to fly off, but couldn't disentangle its legs. I hailed a fisherman, who lent me his knife to cut the line. My companion put his t-shirt over the duck and was able to calm it down and then cut it free. Though bleeding a little from where the line had cut into its legs, the duck flew away normally and wasn't otherwise visibly injured.

Soon after, I made a point of returning to the spot to clean up the tangle of fishing line so no other ducks would get caught; while there, I found another duck that had been caught in the same line, it was suspended just under the water line and was dead.

My question: did my choice to intervene maximize utility? Certainly it seemed to minimize the bird's current suffering (but perhaps I only delayed it and replaced it with a later and possibly more painful death due to starvation, illness, misadventure or predation?). I also extended its lifespan and increased its chances of reproducing (a good thing if ducks have lives worth living). Finally, there are the effects on duck's prey (worms, snails, small fish and amphibians?).

I don't think we can answer that question. We don't know whether those prey are sentient or what the cumulative effects of any one wild animal on utility are. Difficulty calculating the effects of actions is one of the frustrating elements of utilitarianism. You behaved with good intentions, and deserve credit for that though.

I'm going to weigh in and agree with LJM1979 here. Generally, while it would be nice to pursue research in this area, there are much higher utility concerns to focus our time on. (...And I don't mean to say that to diminish your question or concerns.)

For questions like this, I like to look at the animal’s behaviour relative to the rest of its ecosystem. If it hunts, does it cause more or less suffering in its kills than the average predator? Is it part of a species with developed social interactions, such that the loss of one creature will upset others (and such that distress to the creature will be more profound/lasting than distress to less cognitively developed animals). What about the animals it preys on? Do they tend to cause more suffering, such that having more hunters is an advantage?

These questions are notoriously difficult, but it’s a way of thinking that I think it’s important we adopt more if we’re going to concern ourselves with wild animal suffering. Some wild guesses, based on my very limited (and un-Google-supplemented, since I’m hurrying through posts) knowledge of ducks:

1) They seem to swallow their prey whole, which probably doesn’t kill it as quickly as a toothed ocean predator.
2) They have brutal mating habits, and they seem cognitively developed enough to suffer from such habits – and indeed other ducks might be better off for their absence.
3) They eat (in part) small fish, whose population seems to be limited more by predators than by available food, at least since large-scale human exploitation of the oceans reduced their population so much, and which probably feed primarily on non-sentient life. So if the small fish tend to be happy, they do better with fewer predators overall (per point 1). If they tend to be unhappy they’ll do better to be killed by predators other than ducks.

So on balance I would estimate, pending being told by a passing ecologist that I’m a moron and totally misrepresented all the animals involved, that fewer ducks would be better overall, and thus that the answer to your question is no (unless by freeing one injured animal you caused the latter one to die when it wouldn’t have otherwise, in which case if the first one dies earlier of its injuries then maybe).

But I also suspect the effect on your empathy of helping vs leaving to die might be profound enough to outweigh the above, even if the estimations are all roughly right.

A possibility would be to sterilize the duck, although I think it wouldn't be the most cost effective use of money.

You could adopt it too.

Generally, while it would be nice to pursue research in this area, there are much higher utility concerns to focus our time on

Certainly, though this isn't entirely trivial. Supporting wild animal rescue organisations that intervene in nature is one possible strategy for promoting caring about wild animal suffering as part of a broader project of raising awareness of anti-speciesism. It's useful to know if intervention actually makes things worse rather than better (as I may have...).

spindoctor wrote:

Generally, while it would be nice to pursue research in this area, there are much higher utility concerns to focus our time on

Certainly, though this isn't entirely trivial. Supporting wild animal rescue organisations that intervene in nature is one possible strategy for promoting caring about wild animal suffering as part of a broader project of raising awareness of anti-speciesism. It's useful to know if intervention actually makes things worse rather than better (as I may have...).

That's a good point. I've wondered what the net effect of wild animal rehab is. I think they mostly rehab mammals that likely do have lives worth living but we don't know what effects those animals have on other animals or what memetic effect wild animal rehab has.

I imagine wild animal rescue organizations would function not too differently than existing Humane Societies and animal hospitals. I think it's weird our society puts so many resources into ensuring that dogs and cats are okay and well cared for, but then doesn't do much for any other nonhuman animal. It's also weird that some vegans think zoos are bad, when the animals there are often given a better life than they could ever hope for in the wild. But that's just me.

And you're right, this concern is definitely nontrivial.