Ecuador Becomes First Country to Legally Recognize Wild Animals Have Rights
The historic decision came as the country’s highest court heard the case of a woolly monkey named Estrellita.
Credit: Gregoire Dubois
Ecuador has become the first country in the world to recognize the legal rights of nonhuman animals. The landmark ruling came after the country’s highest court heard the case for Estrellita, a woolly monkey who was taken from her home to a zoo, where she died just a week later.
Eighteen-year-old Estrellita had been cared for by librarian Ana Beatriz Burbano Proaño since she was just one month old. However, as owning wild animals is illegal in Ecuador, the primate was taken by authorities in 2019. After her death, Proaño filed a habeas corpus action on behalf of Estrellita, calling for the court to rule that the rights of the animal were violated. The court ruled that Estrellita and other wild animals do have rights and that Estrellita’s rights were violated by both Burbano Proaño and the government.
Furthermore, the court commented that "wild species and their individuals have the right not to be hunted, fished, captured, collected, extracted, kept, retained, trafficked, traded or exchanged", and called for the Ministry of Environment to create more protections for wild animals.
“What makes this decision so important is that now the rights of nature can be used to benefit small groups or individual animals,” Kristen Stilt, a Harvard law professor, said, as reported by Inside Climate News. “That makes rights of nature a far more powerful tool than perhaps we have seen before.”
Ecuador was also the first country in the world to recognize the rights of nature at the constitutional level. Last December, in what was hailed as a landmark ruling, the Constitutional Court applied the rights of nature provision to prohibit mining in the Los Cedros Protected Forest. Now, the 7-2 verdict means the rights of nature include wild animals.
"This verdict raises animal rights to the level of the constitution, the highest law of Ecuador," said leading Ecuadorian environmental lawyer Hugo Echeverría.
"While rights of nature were enshrined in the constitution, it was not clear prior to this decision whether individual animals could benefit from the rights of nature and be considered rights holders as a part of nature.
“The Court has stated that animals are subject of rights protected by rights of nature."
Responding to the decision, Professor Kristen Stilt, Faculty Director of the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School, said: "The concept of the rights of nature is not well known in the U.S., but in other parts of the world, including South America, it is proving to be an important legal tool to protect nature, including animals. And even in the U.S., efforts are underway to recognize the rights of rivers, lakes, and other natural habitats. The Ecuadorian Court's decision is a model for all jurisdictions worldwide."
Steven M. Wise, President of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), added: "This decision is a huge step forward in the global struggle for nonhuman rights. We hope and expect fundamental legal change for nonhuman animals in the United States isn't far behind."
Prior to this landmark ruling, legal practitioners, scholars, and advocates have centered the protection of nature on ecosystems and species, not individuals. When it does come to individuals, animal law has mainly focused on abuse cases, with much of the work not considering animals as rights holders.
In this time of catastrophic climate crisis and the sixth mass extinction of species, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador's judgment constitutes one of the most important legal advances in the field of animal rights and environmental law in recent years, noted the NhRP in a press release.
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