Cameron Meyer Shorb: Nature Was Never Eden

Cameron Meyer Shorb: Nature Was Never Eden

From Species Unite by Species Unite

April 21, 2026 · 39 min · Season 13 · Episode 24

About this episode

Cameron Meyer Shorb discusses the concept of wild animal welfare and the potential for humans to positively impact the lives of wild animals.

"So before I encountered these ideas, whenever I thought about human's relationship to animals, I only thought about the negative parts. I thought the best we could ever achieve would be to maybe erase the impacts we cause and atone for our sins and get back to neutral and be less of a cancer on the Earth. And that was my highest hope was to be a smaller cancer. But then the wild animal welfare perspective says, well, actually humans have made life much better for ourselves over the last couple centuries. We've drastically decreased child mortality and the prevalence of all sorts of diseases. And stuff actually has been getting better for us. Maybe we could make things better for some wild animals." - Cameron Meyer Shorb Most of us who care about animals have been focused on one thing, stopping what humans are doing to them. And it makes sense. The harm is enormous and it's ours to fix. But Cameron Meyer Shorb is asking a different question, "what if even without us, wild animals were already suffering? And what if we had the capacity to actually help them?" Cameron is the executive director of Wild Animal Initiative, a non-profit building the scientific foundations for a field…

People in this episode

Guest: Cameron Meyer Shorb

Topics covered

  • wild animal welfare
  • human-animal relationship
  • animal rights

Keywords

  • animal welfare
  • conservation
  • human impact

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Wild Animal Initiative

Places: Earth

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