Biodiversity and Great Ape Personhood: Reflections on Reason-ability and Compassion-ability

Abstract

That there has been increased observation in the decrease of biodiversity remains perhaps a perennially present submission of biodiversity sciences and environmental activism. Environmental scientists and have raised, and continue to raise resounding alarms concerning threats to the totality of existence following growing loss of species, flora and fauna. Dove-tailing biodiversity-conservationist argument for the preservation of endangered species is the Great Ape-Personhood standpoint that great apes be treated as persons – and, by extension, granted rights – as a means of protecting these life-forms from threat of extinction.  Through the method of critical analysis, the paper seeks to examine the philosophical foundations of biodiversity with a view to seeing the plausibility of adopting the great ape personhood model – which calls for ascription of rights to non-human members of the hominidae – as a veritable platform for protecting great apes, among others, from threat of ecological extinction. The paper established that reason-ability and compassion-ability are established properties of great apes – human and nonhuman. The paper then recommended a framework for creating a sustainable and egalitarian ecology where every reasonable being sees the other as vitally important and protect that other from abuse, misuse and threat of extinction.