Uncharismatic Invasives

Abstract

Although philosophers have examined the ethics of invasive species management, there has been little research approaching this topic from a descriptive, ethnographic perspective. In this article I examine how invasive species managers think about the moral status of the animals they seek to manage. I do so through a case study of Oregon's efforts to manage the invasive species that are rafting across the Pacific attached to tsunami debris in the wake of the Japanese tsunami of 2011. Focusing on the state's response to a dock that washed ashore on Agate Beach with various marine invertebrates attached to it, I argue that these animals' position on two intersecting scales of moral worth—the sociozoologic scale and the phylogenetic scale—rendered them unworthy of moral consideration.