I heartily recommend this intriguing book about laws and consequences. If at one time enslaved peoples, women and non-landowners did not have legal status as persons with rights, but now they do, what is the logical progression? The author shows how cases have been brought to try to grant rights, legal person status and other issues on behalf of primates, orcas and other creatures, even to the Great Barrier Reef. We get a chapter on the various intelligences of these animals and birds, with fascinating studies and examples.

While much of the book focuses on USA with the snail darter habitat being destroyed by damming and the spotted owl being placed at risk of extermination by logging, moving forward to the corporate bullying of fracking and factory farming, other nations are studied too. India, with the Asiatic lion and the grotesquely polluted sacred river Ganja, Costa Rica and Ecuador with constitutional changes to protect rainforest habitat, Bolivia seeing a lake dry up as the glaciers that fed it have vanished due to climate change, Bolivia deciding to exploit its lithium lakes wisely by itself rather than sell the right to mine, Canada with wildlife issues and New Zealand with Maori interpretations of land use rather than ownership are the major areas visited.

A chapter looks at the history of making laws and international agreements in favour of wildlife, responsible animal care, land preservation and biodiversity conservation. From the founding of Greenpeace in 1971 to the Rio Earth Summit, we see the march of international awareness that nature is being destroyed and needs to be cherished. Extinct is forever.

Narwhal tusks rather than elephant ivory are shown to represent the trade in pieces of endangered animals. In this case as with abuse of domestic pets we see that the laws do not contain what most of us would now regard as sufficient punishment. The European Union laws are mentioned as being extremely strict, such as forbidding antibiotics to be used on animals unless to treat illnesses, and banning caged chickens. Standards may have improved slowly but the EU can be credited with removing many draconian abuses of women as well as animals and waterways.

The individuals with vision include lawyers, judges, scientists, environmentalists and farmers as well as native communities. And it's lovely to read of successes - probably due to public opinion rather than legal pressure - such as a company experimenting on chimpanzees which had resisted calls of habeas corpus, finally giving in and sending more than 200 chimps to a sanctuary.

I can strongly recommend The Rights Of Nature to students of law, natural history, environmental campaigns; and human rights. Because the right to clean water, clean air, and a clean natural environment, with wildlife preserved for future generations to enjoy, is a strong element of winning court battles. The writing style is fluid and fact-filled, suitable for a second level student with an interest in the issues, though the lengthy legal disputes are best for third level students or other interested adults. I would have liked some photographs and graphs.

I downloaded an ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.

Notes and references are on pages 235 - 250 in my e-ARC. I counted 40 names that I could be sure were female.
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The Price of Thirst by Karen Piper
Indian Country by Peter Matthiessen
Glaciers - the Politics Of Ice by Jorge Daniel Taillant
This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
What Has Nature Ever Done For Us? by Tony Juniper
Not So Different by Nathan Lents.

It's unfortunate that it has come to this but I wholly agree with The Rights of Nature. It shouldn't have taken so long for our species to realize that Nature is an entity that needs to be protected. From our wild life to our wild lands, Boyd does an excellent job displaying the unnecessary challenges we face to build an implement important policies to protect our environment to ensure the longevity of our species, and more importantly, our planet.

"It is remarkable to reflect," says this Canadian environmental lawyer and author, "on the fact that although there are millions of species on Earth, a single species of hyperintelligent primates—Homo sapiens—has laid claim, through the assertion of legal ownership, to almost every square metre of the 148 million square kilometres of land on the planet."

Not only the land. We have also convinced ourselves that we 'own' all the other life forms living on that land. Which, when you think about it, is a preposterously arrogant conviction. For a bunch of historical reasons that the author briefly describes, it has taken us centuries to start growing up and realizing that this cannot continue. Finally, thankfully, all over the world, the situation is starting to change.

One of the things that has awakened debate on this topic is the dawning realization, based on a large amount of contemporary research, that we are not the only creature to have thoughts, emotions, self-awareness, high levels of intelligence and sensitivity and highly developed communication skills. Most other species have all these things in some degree and some have them to an even greater degree than we do. We no longer have an excuse for treating any other creature as though it were an inanimate object with no will or desire or feelings and no right to self-determination.

Despite the lingering attitude that sees the Earth and its inhabitants as 'resources' put here for the benefit of humans, part of the 'growing up' process is the embrace, by more and more people, of the concept of 'intrinsic value' which has, as Boyd points out, been incorporated into laws in Costa Rica, Canada, Bangladesh, Japan, Tanzania, New Zealand, and the European Union.

It's a slow process. But we are finally starting to understand that just as we are the guardians and caretakers of our children, not their owners, we have a duty of care towards the natural world but no right to own it. The land does not belong to us. In fact if there is any ownership involved it is the other way around. We belong to the land. This understanding is deeply embedded in the spiritual beliefs of various indigenous cultures. Thus it was the influence of the indigenous Maori people of Aotearoa/New Zealand that led to the landmark agreement in 2014 (later enshrined in law) to change the legal status of the Whanganui River. The river no longer belongs to the Government or to anybody at all, but to itself. It is now, and forever will be, a 'legal person' with the right to sue anyone who tries to do it harm. Likewise the land known as Te Urewera, formerly a national park is now a legal entity that can sue anyone who tries to harm it.

There have been similar landmark decisions in Ecuador and Bolivia. The problem there has been not in creating the laws but in implementing them. As Boyd says, "Even when a society recognizes the rights of nature in its highest and strongest law, there will still be tremendous challenges when these rights confront entrenched interests."

But the movement has started in earnest, and will assuredly gain momentum. It may have taken seven centuries to abolish the ownership of people (i.e. slavery) for good, worldwide, but because of the way the law works, and the importance of legal precedent, where countries like Ecuador, Bolivia and New Zealand have plucked up courage to go, eventually the rest will follow, and one day all creatures will have similar 'rights' to those claimed by humans. So it should be.

One has only to look at the far-reaching results of that long-ago decision to make a corporation a 'legal person' to realize what a sea-change will happen when the rest of Nature is accorded that same status in the eyes of our human legal systems.

This book has given me hope. After all these barren years since I first read Peter Singer's book Animal Liberation (1975) and enthusiastically embraced the idea of animal rights, it thrills me to see the world finally starting to wake up to this idea of rights for all of the more-than-human world. We still have a long way to go and I doubt I shall live to see animal rights enshrined in law worldwide or speciesism become as abhorred as racism. But I thank David Boyd for reassuring me that we are finally on our way towards those goals.