Countries are starting to give wild animals legal rights. Here’s why.

ARMILA, Panama — It was just past midnight when marine conservation biologist Callie Veelenturf spotted the telltale tiny zipperlike trails in the sand on a remote Caribbean beach. Under the beams of red-light headlamps, she and a group of volunteers from the local Indigenous Guna Yala community tracked the fresh imprints.

“Aquí, Aquí!” yelled one of them in Spanish.“Here, here! They are trapped!” A pair of leatherback sea turtle hatchlings wriggled inside a cracked whiteplastic bucket turned on its side, fluttering their minuscule flippers in a desperate attempt to escape.

“Take a picture,” said Veelenturf, founder of the Leatherback Project, a conservation nonprofit. “That can maybe be used as evidence someday.”

These hatchlings have legal rights in Panama. A law passed by the country’s National Assemblyearlier this year guarantees sea turtles the right to thrive in a healthy environment, a protection until now typically reserved for humans.

Panama is part of a growing list of countries and communities around the world latching on to the Rights of Nature movement, which seeks to grant wildlife a similar legal status to that of individuals and companies.

While the strategy has so far been mostly used to protect whole ecosystems, such as forests and rivers, advocates of wild animals are starting to deploy it as well, hailing it as an essential tool to combat the biodiversity crisis. Despite existing environmental protections, the world continues to lose animal species at an alarming pace.

Read More…