En 2019, à Concarneau, des cadavres de phoques sont retrouvés sans tête. Un appel à récompense, premier du genre en France, permet de retrouver les auteurs de ce qui a été qualifié de « décapitation ». Un procès singulier a alors lieu à partir d’octobre 2020 à Quimper, visant à caractériser les intentions des présumés coupables et à qualifier les délits envers ces animaux sauvages. Une dizaine d’associations se sont constituées parties civiles. Chacune s’est engagée avec des moyens variables, pour des raisons différentes – les unes pour la cause de la souffrance animale, les autres pour la protection de la biodiversité – tout en opérant un rapprochement entre ces deux causes. A partir de l’ethnographie de ce procès et d’entretiens, nous explorons les raisons et les formes de cette convergence, dans le but de contribuer aux réflexions sur le rôle des associations dans le travail judiciaire pour défendre la nature et produire des condamnations. Nous montrons que des formes de judiciarisation différentes sont à l’œuvre et défendons donc l’intérêt de conjuguer la judiciarisation des animaux au pluriel.
A recent decision in 2020 from the Colombian Supreme Court recognised Nevados National Park as a subject of rights. The ruling is a testament to the significant role of judicial decisions in building a precedent for the rights of nature in Colombia. By examining excerpts from the decision, this text takes the reader on a speculative journey and explores the possible ways to frame the place in question. In this sense, the article uncovers some of the arguments for advocating for the rights of nature and brings a graphical dimension to the question. By visualising the arguments as these are placed in the landscape, it is easier to identify pitfalls and find a path towards developing better solutions regarding the rights of nature.
This article focuses on a long-standing legal battle fought by environmentalists and lawyers in India who opposed a plan of the regional government of Uttarakhand (Himalayan India) to build a highway near a region that is home to the last ecological corridor for tigers and elephants between two major parks. This ethnographic study shows how the Indian State manages the tension between the role it has claimed since Independence in promoting the conservation of emblematic species, in particular tigers, and its political will (often related to electoral and economic interests) to develop the country’s road network. On the one hand, the scientific experts responsible for assessing these road projects are de facto under the government’s control, which often leads them to propose compromises or align themselves with what is known as the ecology of reconciliation. On the other hand, while the judicialisation of the controversy multiplies the fronts and strategies of confrontation – the creation of parallel committees of experts, procedural manoeuvres, diversification of decision-making, and media coverage – this also leaves the outcome of the case open to the vagaries of individual choices and the impact of the balance of power between the institutions involved
This paper considers the interrelationship between the conservation method of rewilding, law and policy, and social acceptance within the UK. It analyses rewilding projects where three species – bison, beavers, and large marsh grasshoppers – have been introduced in new areas within the UK. It uses these cases to help illustrate some of the difficulties that may be encountered by rewilding projects that involve animal introductions. This paper also considers the UK regulatory landscape in which these introductions have taken place and whether the law has supported or hindered these rewilding projects. Overall, it aims to assess what changes and considerations may be needed in our law and policy to enable new and novel methods of conservation to help in the biodiversity crisis.
This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Sri Lanka, where I followed animal welfare advocates and legal experts involved in both formal and informal interventions concerning the treatment of captive elephants. It explores how moments of elephant resistance – such as breaking free from chains or running amok – are not only interpreted as expressions of nonhuman agency but are actively mobilised to challenge the legal and moral frameworks that normalise captivity. These disruptive acts destabilise conventional boundaries between wildness and domestication, bringing elephants’lived experiences into the public sphere. In doing so, they contribute to the emergence of a contested form of “lively legality”, in which legal norms are reshaped by the affective and political force of multispecies encounters. Rather than simply arguing for an expansion of legal personhood, advocates foreground questions of interspecies justice, complicating anthropocentric understandings of responsibility, rights, and care.
