An elephant’s battle in Conn. courts

Do wild animals such as elephants have a fundamental right to bodily liberty and bodily integrity? An animal rights group called the NonHuman Rights Project argues yes and a legal case is now occurring in the Connecticut courts. They hope to change the law from seeing animals such as elephants, apes and whales from “things” to having a legal personhood, which means that as aware and autonomous nonhuman animals they have the fundamental right to certain liberties.

The lawsuit concerns an elephant named Minnie owned by the Commerford Zoo, a traveling zoo in Goshen. Minnie was a wildborn elephant who was captured at two months old and sent to the United States. She performs in the circus and gives rides to people. Elephants do this under the constant threat of physical pain. A bullhook, a heavy baton with a sharp metal hook on one end, is used to inflict pain on the animal in order to make it do what the handler wants.

If the lawsuit is successful, Minnie would be sent to a sanctuary where she will live among other elephants in a habitat as closely possible to her natural environment as possible. This is one of the liberties the NonHuman Rights Project is fighting for — wild animals should be able to remain in their own natural environment. At the sanctuary Minnie would no longer be used by humans to do things which are unnatural to wild animals and she would be free from the infliction of pain, whether that be physical or emotional. This is what is meant by the right to bodily integrity and bodily liberty.

Animal rights groups and an online petition on Change.Org signed by more than 300,000 people are requesting the Commerford Zoo release Minnie to either the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee or The Performing Animal Welfare Society In California. The Commerford Zoo has refused.

There has been recent effort to ban wild animals from traveling zoos. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (DConn.) and Sen. Robert Menendez (DN.J.) are original cosponsors of the Traveling Exotic Animal and Public Safety Protection Act introduced in July 2019 that, if approved, would “amend the Animal Welfare Act to prohibit traveling circuses and other traveling acts from using and exploiting wild animals for profit, stating that circuses and fairs are not safe or humane for wild animals.”

I hope Minnie will find refuge at a sanctuary and the courts will recognize these animals as beings who have some basic fundamental legal rights. There is a word “phajaan” which means” to break the spirit” of an elephant — a process using physical and emotional pain so the elephant is easier to control. Humanity should try to protect the spirit of animals in the wild instead of trying to break that spirit.

Anne Mazzone lives in Easton.

Associated Press In this file photo, an Asian elephant kicks up dust while making her first appearance at the Los Angeles Zoo.