Wildlife Value Types
In 1980, Yale professor Dr. Stephen Kellert (1943–2016) developed a groundbreaking framework to understand how people relate to wildlife. He identified eleven distinct value orientations that shape public attitudes toward animals—from deep reverence to outright aversion.
Here’s a quick snapshot of Kellert’s value types:
- Ecologistic – valuing wildlife for its role in the ecosystem and the services it provides to the environment
- Moralistic – seeing animals as sentient beings with intrinsic value and a right to ethical treatment
- Humanistic – forming emotional connections with animals, expressing care and concern for their wellbeing
- Aesthetic – appreciating the beauty of animals through nature, art, photography, and film
- Symbolic – valuing wildlife for spiritual or cultural meaning
- Naturalistic – enjoying personal experiences with wildlife, like birdwatching or hiking
- Scientific – valuing animals for the knowledge they help us gain through study and research
- Neutralistic – feeling indifferent or disconnected from wildlife
- Utilitarian – valuing animals primarily for the material benefits they provide, such as hunting or trapping income
- Dominionistic – seeking control over animals, sometimes for sport or convenience
- Negativistic – fearing or resenting wild animals, often viewing them as dangerous or harmful
Whose Values Count?
Although many state wildlife agencies claim to use a science-based approach, decisions are often driven more by values than data. In practice, current wildlife policy heavily favors utilitarian, negativistic and dominionistic values. Agencies often use science selectively to justify decisions that serve predetermined objectives—especially those benefiting recreational hunting or managing species seen as “nuisances.”
Science can inform and indicate the likely outcomes of decisions, but it is values that drive and determine decisions made. Rather than taking a holistic approach that looks at entire ecosystems, the dominant paradigm in wildlife management emphasizes managing specific species to maximize recreational opportunities and other uses to humans. This approach neglects the diverse and shifting values of the broader public. Additionally, as Kellert’s framework indicates, these values are separate from – and sometimes conflict with – an ecological framework and other values.
For example, hunters often prefer that wildlife agencies manage white-tailed deer herds using a “maximum sustained yield” (MSY) model. This approach seeks to maintain deer herds at densities that produce the greatest number of fawns to ensure optimal hunter opportunity. But this model overlooks broader ecological impacts. Elevated deer populations can degrade plant biodiversity and forest health, even at levels below MSY targets.
As former Pennsylvania Game Commission biologist Gary Alt explained:
“Ninety-three percent of Pennsylvania’s hunters hunt deer and surveys indicate that hunter satisfaction is closely tied to the number of deer they see. These hunters demand to see more deer than the land could ever possibly sustain and they very effectively lobby administrators and policy makers (the commissioners), forcing them to implement seasons and bag limits that have no chance of ever balancing the deer herd with their habitat…. Development of an adequate, sustainable, broader-based conservation funding program will be necessary to solve this and other problems. Currently the Game Commission is almost totally dependent on hunter-generated monies.” (source)
This focus on satisfying hunter demand can directly conflict with ecological priorities.
Meanwhile, the same system often treats native carnivores like wolves, coyotes, and bobcats with hostility. Instead of valuing their ecological roles as keystone species, they’re targeted for population suppression. Across much of their range, they can be legally hunted or trapped with no limits and few restrictions—and in many states, they’re even killed in contests that reward the most kills.
These practices stem from negativistic and dominionistic values—views that see carnivores as threats or obstacles to human interests. But many people today recognize these species as essential to healthy ecosystems and deserving of compassion and respect.
Dr. Francisco Santiago-Ávila, a former postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin’s Carnivore Coexistence Lab and currently the Science and Advocacy Director at Washington Wildlife First, summed it up this way:
“The scientific and unethical failure of the agency when it comes to educating the public and ‘managing’ wolves and most other wildlife… is due to the agency’s perspective of wild animals as ‘natural resources’ that humans can do whatever they wish to as long as it is done in a sustainable manner. This view of wild animals as resources rather than living beings deserving of care and respect is actually an ethical position (not a scientific one) that goes unstated… This institutional perspective instrumentalizes all wildlife, dismisses their wellbeing, and promotes their killing rather than their ethical consideration.” (source)
Bobcat in Marin County, California | Credit: Stefanie Kraus
So what would it look like to reimagine wildlife management through a different lens?
A system informed by ecological, moralistic, and humanistic values would take a more holistic approach. It would emphasize entire ecosystems—not just certain species managed for human use—and protect wildlife for their roles in nature, their intrinsic worth, and their right to live free from cruelty. This approach would shift away from a disproportionate emphasis on management of ungulates and other species that are hunted to recognize the importance of native carnivores as well as species that are not hunted like hummingbirds, salamanders and bats.
For instance, using bobcats as an example:
- Ecological values would recognize how bobcats contribute to biodiversity—not just as predators, but as part of a healthy food web.
- Humanistic values show up when a wildlife photographer develops a bond with a particular bobcat, appreciating that animal not just as a population statistic, but as an individual life.
- Moralistic values demand that we end cruel practices like trapping and wildlife killing contests, replacing them with policies rooted in respect and compassion.
As Kevin Hansen wrote in Bobcat: Master of Survival, “an informed, caring, and engaged public” is crucial to the bobcat’s future – not just wildlife managers or industry interests. These animals are intelligent, adaptive, and worthy of more than being reduced to targets or trophies.
We need a new paradigm in wildlife management—one that embraces the full range of public values and respects the diversity of life. Because wildlife doesn’t just exist for human use. It exists for its own sake, and for the health of the planet we all share.
This article was contributed by Peggy Clark, a Geospatial and Environmental Science student at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.
