During a lull in the heavy rain I watched a dozen White Egrets in the grass south of Lake Casitas. Two families of deer were prancing on the hill above them at the forest’s edge, no doubt delighted with the replenishment of the grasslands. Across the road stood a solitary, statuesque Great Blue Heron. I carried with me an essay explaining how it is that we come to own wild animals. When the rain started up again, I went home to pet and hold Shanti, the 9-month old wild animal I live with. He's starting to greet me with “Hello.”
The dominion we grant ourselves to exploit every living creature on Earth is regulated exclusively for human benefit. We have crafted some exceptions to the general rule that animals are ours for the using and killing. For example, animal fights for human entertainment are banned in the United States, and laws against cruelty to animals limit some obvious and egregious abuses. We have also protected some animals through instruments like the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
But for the billions of hunted, slaughtered, tormented and abused animals outside these statutes, it’s basically tough luck. They have little legal recourse. Wolves may be protected from being shot, plowed or urbanized into utter extinction, but only because such protection is viewed as a public (i.e., human) good. Rarely, if ever, are the animal’s own interests taken into consideration.
One problem is that legal theory reserves the concept of rights for “persons.” Animals have no standing in court. As a result of being defined out of the game, animal interests are by definition subservient to human interests.
The paradigm needs to shift. Animal rights must be represented—-first in our imaginations and then in our courts and legislatures--independently of human interests.
Until this happen, no one is safe. Not the herons, not the deer, not the parrots, not the people, not the Earth.
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