Five Elephants In Colorado Up for Personhood
This week the Colorado Supreme Court heard arguments on behalf of five elephants in the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. The question at hand: Shall the pachyderms have the same rights as “persons” under the law?
If the answer is yes, then the elephants need to be freed from captivity. In their case that would mean relocation to a sanctuary, as the five – Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo – would not fare well in the wild, having spent most of their decades-long lives behind bars.
The Colorado Five are represented by the Nonhuman Rights Project, last seen trying (unsuccessfully) to emancipate Happy the elephant from her confines in the Bronx Zoo.
The group claims that the captive animals – intelligent and social creatures – are showing signs of brain damage caused by their restricted lives in the zoo. The elephants, all born in Africa and taken captive at one or two years old, are now in their forties and fifties.
According to their defenders, the elephants “were all born in the wild in Africa and torn from their herds as babies. Since arriving in the US in the 1970s and 1980s, they’ve been denied the lives they were born to have — lives filled with freedom, family, and open spaces. Instead, they’ve been held captive, suffering in enclosures that limit their movement, social interaction, and ability to thrive.”
But the judge in Colorado, Justice Melissa Hart, asks the same question that was asked in the Bronx case: “How do I know when it stops?” That is, if we grant zoo animals personhood, what’s next, pets? Will law-abiding (human) citizens be forced to liberate Fido and Tabby?
At some point the courts will have to reconcile this slippery-slope argument and recognize at least some rights for our fellow sentient animals. A modest beginning would be to declare that all creatures have the right to a life that at least approximates their natural environment.
Let’s start with the Colorado Five.
If you want to donate to the defense fund (and read the backstories on each elephant), see the Nonhuman Rights Project here.
Photo credit: Molly Condit for the Nonhuman Rights Project
