Following up on my final point above, it is not at all clear to me whether Rope, and the fellow philosophers and theologians that he cites, are talking about animal suffering in this real world at all, or some completely imaginary hypothetical world.
From my perspective, the title of the article therefore might as well be:
Why Evolution Does Not Make the Problem of Evil Worse in Middle Earth
… and I see no basis for taking this fiction-based philosophy seriously.
@Puck_Mendelssohn made a similar point about the unreality of much of modern philosophy, in an earlier thread about Rope’s work: