It is often assumed that anthropocentrism involves an instrumental account of nature. Weak anthropocentric intrinsic value environmental ethics refutes this assumption. Its premises, however, are problematic. They depend on human aesthetic and symbolic judgments about nature as well as on collective allocation. The former are ultimately instrumental while the latter are based on an outdated notion of ecosystems’ wholeness. To address this problem, I argue that a new weak anthropocentric intrinsic value environmental ethics should be individualistic and capability-based in order to free it from human aesthetic or symbolic judgements about nature. I suggest that weak anthropocentric intrinsic value environmental ethics should be subsidiary. This means that the intrinsic value of nature is more likely to be endorsed by the public when assessments of ecosystem goods and services in a case-by-case basis do not suffice or are not reliable over time to protect natural environments. Such a combination of instrumental and non-instrumental anthropocentrism may serve to guide conservation in the Anthropocene.