For Earth Week 2024, we’re sharing glimpses of our vision for a just future for nonhuman animals. In this email, NhRP attorney Jake Davis imagines how his corner of the world might look 30 years from now. Note: What you’ll read below, with the exception of Tommy’s lawsuit, hasn’t happened–yet.
It’s September 15, 2054: a date that used to represent the beginning of a cruel six-month wolf hunting season in Montana, a state I’ve now lived in for over three decades. I’m at my desk, about to begin my workday with the Nonhuman Rights Project. Right now, I’m writing a book that looks back on how we secured the right to liberty for autonomous nonhuman animals across the US–finally bringing an end to the centuries in which humans were allowed to imprison them.
On this day especially, I feel both elation and a deep sense of calm. We’ve come far in the last thirty-plus years. As a Montanan and an animal rights lawyer, I marvel at the widespread societal and legal change we’ve collectively ignited. For example, here in Montana, wolf family units are no longer being destroyed. Wolf mothers and fathers are able to teach their pups how to track, hunt, and collaborate to survive with their brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles, with no fear of arcane leg-hold traps, strangulation snares, or the muzzle of a rifle hidden by camouflage.
Before you read more of this fictional story, will you consider making a donation to help build a real future where the legal rights of animals are widely recognized and protected? Through Sunday, all donations are being matched up to $25,000.
And that’s just one aspect of the progress that has been made. When I go for a hike, I see, hear, smell, and taste a Montana ecosystem that’s intact and unspoiled by unjustifiable slaughter. Everything is healthier––even the people. Chronic wasting disease (which doesn’t affect wolves) hasn't been found in hooved animals for years because wolves target sick individuals, keeping the transmission of the fatal disease at bay. The forests that surround my town are full of life because wolves keep elk, moose, and mule deer on the move, mitigating overgrazing.
The trickle-down effect is clear to anyone willing to look. The lack of intensive grazing has allowed plant life to thrive on riverbanks, providing critical habitat for spawning fish, building supplies for a growing beaver population and all but eliminating erosion. Coyotes, no longer the most prominent canines, have been on the move, too. This has meant more rodent life, which has in turn meant more avian life, birds’ beautiful songs floating through the trees along with the seeds they help disperse in the forest ecosystem.
These are but a few examples of the term scientists now call a “trophic cascade.” It happened in Yellowstone in the late 90s and early 00s after wolves were reintroduced, and it’s happening now in Northwest Montana where the heavens have yet to fall since wolf hunts have been outlawed.
That book I mentioned is almost finished. What remains for me to write is the introduction, which is especially important to me because the book is dedicated to Steve Wise, the NhRP’s founder, and my hero.
This year, I'm the same age he was–63 years old–when he filed our first case on behalf of Tommy the chimpanzee. I’m inspired every day by his courage and resolve, which ultimately changed the lives of millions of nonhuman animals and my own. He’d be amazed by the abundance of wildlife at my doorstep if only he could walk with me through my local forests, but, I think, he wouldn’t be surprised to see how our persistence has paid off. How, over time, nonhuman animal rights have become almost commonplace, and judges, including in the states initially most hostile to our arguments, ultimately found the courage to do what the law requires and recognize animals as the lawful holders of legal rights.
Yes, opposition to nonhuman animal rights (even to nonhuman animals generally) does still exist in 2054. However, the vast majority of my contemporary human animals are ready for real change–for nonhuman animals, the planet, and ourselves. For me, seeing wolf tracks in the spring snow is a reminder that we’ve achieved much, but the fight is eternal, and I hope humans will never stop pushing for greater protections for our nonhuman animal neighbors. I know I won’t.
