When New York’s highest court rejected the attempt by animal-rights activists to have Happy the elephant declared legally a “person” with rights and issued a writ of habeas corpus freeing him from the Bronx Zoo, I celebrated. Personhood and rights belong exclusively in the human realm.
But that may not be the end of the story. Now, a New York City Councilman is proposing legislation that would, in effect, bar elephants from NYC. From the proposed ordinance:
No person shall keep, restrain, or possess an elephant in the city, except as provided in subdivision b of this section.
b. Exception. A person shall not be liable for a violation of this section in connection with keeping, restraining, or possessing an elephant if all of the following conditions are met:
1. The total usable area of the elephant’s habitat must be a minimum of 15 acres per elephant;
2. The elephant must have continuous access to topographic features and stimuli necessary for emotional and physical wellbeing throughout the habitat;
3. The elephant must be able to forage for food and water throughout the habitat;
4. Female elephants must be housed in groups and allowed to form herds and social groupings unless a female elephant has a contagious disease that necessitates separation from other elephants;
5. Male elephants must be housed either in herds, or if solitary, in close proximity to other elephants where they can engage in olfactory, visual, and vocal communication
If these onerous requirements cannot be met, the elephant must be moved to a facility that complies with all the requirements listed — meaning a sanctuary.
The intent here is clear. Since providing 15 acres per elephant with forage and water would be impossible to meet, the bill would effectively ban all elephants from the city of New York. I think proponents should bear the burden of proof here in what would appear to be an unnecessarily broad law. But at least the ordinance sounds to be in the animal welfare approach to husbandry. In other words, if it passes, elephants would not be granted rights.
That is a distinction with important differences. Animal welfare deals with human duties to provide humane care balanced against the benefit we receive from the use of animals. This is determined on a case-by-case basis. Thus, we own dogs as pets but ban dog fighting.
Animal rights, in contrast, is a subversive ideology that holds that humans and animals are equal and that whatever is done to or with an animal should be judged the same as if done to a human being. The end-goal of animal rights is the prohibition of all animal ownership and the banning of any instrumental use thereof, meaning as food, in research, for clothing, etc..
So, even if the proposal is enacted and elephants are effectively banned from the Big Apple, the law will not endanger human exceptionalism nor undermine the crucial moral distinction between us and fauna.